Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory [1st ed.] 9783030419080, 9783030419097

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction: Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory (Bart van der Steen, Thierry P. F. Verburgh)....Pages 1-16
Front Matter ....Pages 17-18
Situating ‘Subculture’: On the Origins and Limits of the Term for Understanding Youth Cultures (Andy Bennett)....Pages 19-34
Myth and Authenticity in Subculture Studies (J. Patrick Williams)....Pages 35-53
Front Matter ....Pages 55-56
Punk Legends: Cultural Representation and Ostension (Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl)....Pages 57-78
‘Bad to the Bone’: The Myth and Mystique of the Motorcycle Gang (Bill Osgerby)....Pages 79-104
‘Two Baltimores’ and the Conflicting Representations of Baltimore’s Wild Out Wheelie Boyz (Glen Wood)....Pages 105-124
Front Matter ....Pages 125-126
Remembering Andre ‘Angel’ Melendez: Rave Subculture’s Contested/Conflicted Memory of a Racially Motivated Murder (Yamil Avivi)....Pages 127-149
‘From the Dark Past’: Historiographies of Violence in Norwegian Black Metal (Ross Hagen)....Pages 151-170
Between Revolution and the Market: Bob Marley and the Cultural Politics of the Youth Icon (Jeremy Prestholdt)....Pages 171-194
Front Matter ....Pages 195-196
Memories of Being Punk in West Germany: Personal and Shared Recollections in Life Stories (Knud Andresen)....Pages 197-214
Mapping Subcultures from Scratch: Moving Beyond the Mythology of Dutch Post-Punk (Richard Foster)....Pages 215-232
Front Matter ....Pages 233-234
Imagining and Performing Marginalization: Hip Hop and the Arab Spring of 2011 (Igor Johannsen)....Pages 235-259
‘Soaking Up the Punky-Funky All-Feel of Eastern Kreuzberg’: Myth-Making, Preference Construction, and Youth Cultures (Thierry P. F. Verburgh)....Pages 261-290
Back Matter ....Pages 291-302

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF SUBCULTURES AND POPULAR MUSIC

PALGRAVE STU HISTORY O DIES IN THE F SUBCULT URES AND POPU LAR MUSIC

Researc hing Sub cultures Myth an , d Memo r y Edited b y

Bart van

der Stee n · Thier

ry P. F. V erburgh

Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music

Series Editors Keith Gildart University of Wolverhampton Wolverhampton, UK Anna Gough-Yates University of Roehampton London, UK Sian Lincoln Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool, UK Bill Osgerby London Metropolitan University London, UK Lucy Robinson University of Sussex Brighton, UK John Street University of East Anglia Norwich, UK Peter Webb University of the West of England Bristol, UK Matthew Worley University of Reading Reading, UK

From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats through 1950s rock ‘n’ rollers, beatniks and Teddy boys; 1960s surfers, rude boys, mods, hippies and bikers; 1970s skinheads, soul boys, rastas, glam rockers, funksters and punks; on to the heavy metal, hip-hop, casual, goth, rave and clubber styles of the 1980s, 90s, noughties and beyond, distinctive blends of fashion and music have become a defining feature of the cultural landscape. The Subcultures Network series is international in scope and designed to explore the social and political implications of subcultural forms. Youth and subcultures will be located in their historical, socio-economic and cultural context; the motivations and meanings applied to the aesthetics, actions and manifestations of youth and subculture will be assessed. The objective is to facilitate a genuinely cross-disciplinary and transnational outlet for a burgeoning area of academic study. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14579

Bart van der Steen • Thierry P. F. Verburgh Editors

Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory

Editors Bart van der Steen Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands

Thierry P. F. Verburgh Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music ISBN 978-3-030-41908-0    ISBN 978-3-030-41909-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Masha Raymers / Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction: Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory  1 Bart van der Steen and Thierry P. F. Verburgh Section I  Conceptual Clarifications  17 2 Situating ‘Subculture’: On the Origins and Limits of the Term for Understanding Youth Cultures 19 Andy Bennett 3 Myth and Authenticity in Subculture Studies 35 J. Patrick Williams Section II  Media, Myths and Subcultural Actors  55 4 Punk Legends: Cultural Representation and Ostension 57 Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl 5 ‘Bad to the Bone’: The Myth and Mystique of the Motorcycle Gang 79 Bill Osgerby

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CONTENTS

6 ‘Two Baltimores’ and the Conflicting Representations of Baltimore’s Wild Out Wheelie Boyz105 Glen Wood Section III  Subcultural Myth and Memory 125 7 Remembering Andre ‘Angel’ Melendez: Rave Subculture’s Contested/Conflicted Memory of a Racially Motivated Murder127 Yamil Avivi 8 ‘From the Dark Past’: Historiographies of Violence in Norwegian Black Metal151 Ross Hagen 9 Between Revolution and the Market: Bob Marley and the Cultural Politics of the Youth Icon171 Jeremy Prestholdt Section IV  Punk, Personal and Subcultural Memory 195 10 Memories of Being Punk in West Germany: Personal and Shared Recollections in Life Stories197 Knud Andresen 11 Mapping Subcultures from Scratch: Moving Beyond the Mythology of Dutch Post-Punk215 Richard Foster

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Section V  Subcultural Legacies: Global Spread and Adoption 233 12 Imagining and Performing Marginalization: Hip Hop and the Arab Spring of 2011235 Igor Johannsen 13 ‘Soaking Up the Punky-Funky All-Feel of Eastern Kreuzberg’: Myth-Making, Preference Construction, and Youth Cultures261 Thierry P. F. Verburgh Index291

Notes on Contributors

Knud  Andresen is a senior researcher at the Research Centre for Contemporary History (Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte) and an adjunct professor at University of Hamburg. His latest publications include A European Youth Revolt. European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s (2016, co-edited with B.S. van der Steen), and Dissidente Kommunisten. Das sowjetische Modell und seine Kritiker (2018, co-edited wiht M. Kessler and A. Schildt). Yamil  Avivi  is an independent scholar who earned a PhD in American Culture at  the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He researches and teaches on Latinos in the US, Latino queer subjectivity and migrations, and Arab and Muslim Diasporas in the Americas. Andy Bennett  is a professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science  at Griffith University, Australia. His latest publications include Popular Music Scenes and Cultural Memory (with Ian Rogers, 2016), DIY Cultures and Underground Music Scenes (co-edited with Paula Guerra, 2019) and British Progressive Pop, 1970-1980 (2020). Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl  is an associate professor at the University of New Haven, the United States. His publications include Punk Rock and the Politics of Place: Building a Better Tomorrow (2014), and ‘Print is Dead: The Promise and Peril of Digital Media for Subcultural Resistance’ (2015). Richard Foster  is a music journalist based in the Netherlands. He is specialized in the Dutch Post-punk scene from around 1980. He writes for music publications including The Quietus, The Wire, and Louder Than War. ix

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Ross  Hagen  is a musicologist and multi-instrumentalist at Utah Valley University, and has written on diverse subjects including black metal, medievalism, avant-garde electronic music, music fan fiction, and horror. His recent and upcoming publications include Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet (2019) and A Blaze in the Northern Sky (2020). Igor  Johannsen (MA) is a research fellow in the research network ‘Re-Configurations: History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa’ at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) at the University of Marburg, Germany. He received his Magister Artium in Islamic Studies, History and Political Science from the University of Hamburg in 2011. Bill Osgerby  is a professor at London Metropolitan University, England. His latest publications include Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of ‘Consensus’ (2014) and Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change (2014). Jeremy  Prestholdt  is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, the United States. His publications include Icons of Dissent: The Global Resonance of Che, Marley, Tupac, and Bin Laden (2019)  and Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (2008). Bart van der Steen  is lecturer in Modern History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His publications include A European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s (2016, co-edited with K. Andresen), and The City is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe, 1980-2014 (2014, co-edited with L. van Hoogenhuijze and A. Katzeff). Thierry P. F. Verburgh  is research coordinator of the Center for Applied Research  of the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS), the Netherlands. His research focuses on the social interactions and epistemology (e.g. perceived reality, myth-making, and fundamentalism) of youth cultures, generations, and social movements.

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J.  Patrick  Williams  is an associate professor  of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is an associate editor of the journal Deviant Behavior and has edited and authored several books, including Authenticity, Self and Society (2009), Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts (2011), and Studies in the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity (2020). Glen Wood  is a PhD at York University, Canada. His research focuses on non-fiction film and media, with a forthcoming dissertation on selfdocumenting subcultures and media hierarchies.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory Bart van der Steen and Thierry P. F. Verburgh

The spectacular nature of youth subcultures can easily lead to the creation of myths that become deeply ingrained in popular memory.1 Punk, for example, is commonly held to have originated from rebellious and deviant youths, while hip hop is usually regarded as the voice of marginalized people from US American ghettos. These myths may or may not be true, but they inherently provide a limited yet authoritative understanding of 1  The relationship between youth subcultures and memory is among other discussed in: A. Bennett, ‘Popular Music, Cultural Memory and Everyday Aesthetics’ in E. de la Fuente and P.  Murphy (eds.), Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 243–262; M.S.  Gorbuleva, ‘Phenomenon of the Memory and its Role in the Marginal Subcultures’, Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin vol. 11 (2013), 188–193; C.  Strong, Grunge: Music and Memory (London & New  York: Routledge 2016); A.  Danielsen, ‘Aesthetic Value, Cultural Significance and Canon Formation in Popular Music’, Studia musicologica Norvegica vol. 32 (2006), 55–72.

B. van der Steen (*) Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands T. P. F. Verburgh Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_1

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what a subculture entails, how it emerged, and how it developed. Myths essentialize ‘the’ history and origins of a subculture and reduce it to a limited set of characteristic features that get ascribed with certain meanings, shrouded in collective norms and values, sometimes on the basis of prejudice.2 And because they are retold by subcultural actors and observers alike, through various channels of communication—most notably through word-of-mouth and popular media formats such as newspaper interviews, documentary films, and memoirs—they significantly influence popular understandings of what subcultures are and how they develop. Even more so, these myths influence many of the sources that researchers of youth subcultures draw on—for example, media reports, policy debates, and memoirs of subcultural actors.3 This situation raises the question of how researchers are to deal with these myths. Is it possible to move beyond them in order to understand what youth subcultures ‘really’ entail, or is it rather the process of myth-making itself that should be central in scholarly investigations? This volume collects contributions that analyze how subcultural myths develop, what they mean to people, and how they can be studied. Subcultures appeal to the imagination due to their outspoken and elusive nature. The term itself implies a division between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, those who are ‘in the know’ and those who are not. Subcultures thus provide people with a sense of identity and belonging, whether they belong to a subculture or not.4 As people try to relate and grasp what subcultures entail, various outspoken images, ideas, and narratives emerge. When conceptions about youth subcultures are wholeheartedly embraced and shared by a larger group of people, they are, in a way, elevated from the reservoir of popular imagination, and gain a powerful and convincing mythical status.5 2  For critical discussions of myth studies, see W.G. Doty, Mythography: The Study of Myths (second edition; Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2000); E. Csapo, Theories of Mythology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005); R.A.  Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction (second edition; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 3  See for a case study: A. Medhurst, ‘Punk, Memory and Autobiography’ in R. Sabin, Punk Rock: So What? (London & New York: Routledge 1999), 219–231. 4  J. Patrick Williams, Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts (New York: Polity Press, 2011); S. Blackman and M. Kempson (eds.), The Subcultural Imagination: Theory, Research and Reflexivity in Contemporary Youth Cultures (London: Routledge, 2018). 5  This process of elevation, also referred to as ‘sacralization’, is seen as one of the defining and distinctive characteristics of what makes a myth, and of what separates them from mere stereotypes or archetypes. See among others E.  Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the

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This is especially the case when the conceptions of subcultural actors and those of others collide, which can lead to the emergence of various conflicting myths. Punks, for example, can be seen as socially degraded and parasitical youths, or as the moral conscious of decadent societies. Hip hop adherents, for that matter, can be seen as petty criminals, acting out frustrations about their marginalized position in society, or as people’s champions, addressing and protesting social marginalization. In both cases, the identities of punk and hip hop are essentialized through historical narratives and specifically chosen sets of characteristic features. These are representations people get invested in, and sometimes embrace wholeheartedly. When these representations are deemed to reflect the ‘true nature’ of punk or hip hop, they become mythicized. Since researchers base their work in part on sources that are influenced by subcultural myths—that is: sensationalized accounts, (unintentional) faulty retellings or deliberately constructed renditions of the past and present of subcultures—, they have to be especially careful of contributing to these mythical representations of subcultures, and instead need to critically engage with them. This volume aims not so much to critique the validity of subcultural myths, as to move beyond them and analyze the process of myth-making in order to critically engage with the memory and meaning of youth subcultures. It thus asks how subcultural identities and representations are constructed and change over time. In doing so, this volume draws on subcultural theories, myth studies, and memory studies. This volume takes as its starting point that an analysis of subcultural myths and myth-making can contribute valuable insights to subcultural studies. In the past decades, memory studies has grown into a prominent and innovative field of research, and as part of this development, the study of myths has recently gained more prominence as well. Memory studies investigates the ways in which past and present phenomena are remembered, commemorated, and imagined. Myth studies analyzes the processes through which certain representations of past and present events are elevated or ‘sacralized’ by groups of people and infused with powerful meaning. What connects memory studies and myth studies is the importance of shared representations for individual and collective identities. As subcultural studies finds itself at a crossroads, this notion can open new avenues Religious Life (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1915); M.  Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (London: Sheed and Ward, 1958); Ibid., Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (London: Fontana, 1968); G. Bouchard, Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).

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for research, for subcultures are not only built around shared passions and interests—either for music, politics, board games or anything else—but also around shared imaginations and memories. For quite some time now, prominent scholars question the very existence of subcultures.6 Especially the concept of clearly demarcated ‘sub’cultures acting within a more encompassing mainstream culture has become contested. Some researchers therefore prefer to talk about leisure-based youth cultures. Others argue not to throw away the baby with the bathwater, and instead hold that although subcultures may not be ‘real’ social phenomena, they become real when people believe in them. This volume will use these notions interchangeably, sometimes through the combination of ‘youth subcultures’. In fact, the process of myth-­ making fits well with all these three conceptions. First, subcultural myths can be intentionally or unintentionally created by self-proclaimed ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’, as to differentiate and demarcate themselves from each other. Secondly, the process of myth-making can foster representations that are shared across different groups and cultures and thus become deeply ingrained in cultural memory. Lastly, believing in the validity of subcultural phenomena can result in the making of subcultural myths. Analyzing the narratives, imaginations, myths, and memory of youth subcultures can thus offer a valuable contribution to the study of sub- or youth cultures. However, it is not enough to solely analyze the contents of subcultural myths. In order to understand how subcultural myths emerge and develop it is just as important to investigate which processes and actors are central to myth-making. By combining concepts and approaches from subcultural studies, myth studies, and memory studies, this volume aims to establish (i) how representations of subcultures emerge, develop, and become canonized through the process of mythification; (ii) which developments and actors are crucial to this process; (iii) what these myths mean to people, both to subcultural actors as well as others; and finally (iv) how researchers like historians, sociologists, and anthropologists should deal with these myths and myth-­ making processes. By considering these questions, we aim to provide new insights on how to research the identity, history, and memory of youth subcultures.

6  See for example: A. Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?: Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, Sociology vol. 33 (1999) no. 3, 599–617.

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Subcultural Studies The term ‘subculture’ was first introduced around 1900 by sociologists and ethnographic researchers of the Chicago School to explain deviant and criminal group behavior of (mainly European) immigrants in fast growing and industrializing US American cities such as Chicago.7 These scholars argued that people who did not have the possibility to partake in the dominant or mainstream culture formed their own subcultures, with their own norms and values, to survive in a hostile world. This notion of countercultural subgroups, opposed or in some way inferior to a more encompassing dominant mainstream culture, would prove to be very influential for the study of youth cultures. Around 1970, the term subculture was adopted and reformulated by scholars of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in order to explain the rise of youth cultures out of the British working class after the Second World War. CCCS scholars such as Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, and John Clarke were fascinated by the styles and rituals of subcultural youths such as punks, skinheads, and Teddy Boys. Drawing from a combination of neo-Marxism, semiotics, and structuralism, CCCS scholars set out to ‘decipher’ for themselves the meanings of subcultural styles. Envisioning these youths as working class and with meager social prospects, CCCS scholars interpreted their alternative clothing styles and deviant behavior as a form of resistance and class struggle. Being unable to improve their social and political situation in any real or material way, working class youths were left with cultural refusal as their last option for resistance, especially against the growing dominance of middle class culture. John Clarke thus held that the subcultural strategy solved ‘in an imaginary way, problems which at the concrete material level remain[ed] unresolved’. In this volume, J. Patrick Williams takes the example of the Teddy Boys, who according to CCCS scholars, ‘took the upper-class Edwardian suit and the Western bootlace tie out of their original consumer context and rearticulated, subculturally, the demands of young lower-working-class men to become visible and taken seriously by the rest of society’. The fact that subcultural youths took styles and apparel from 7  For discussions on subcultural research, see among other K.  Gelder and S.  Thornton (eds.), The Subcultures Reader (London: Routledge, 1997); S. Blackman, ‘Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 8 (2005) no. 1, 1–20; J.P. Williams, Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2011).

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past and current fashions, and rearranged them to imbue them with new meanings was not only creative, but also subversive. Conceived as spectacular if ultimately futile attempts to resist, the rituals and styles of subcultural youths were elevated to heroic forms of refusal and resistance. Although the definitions of subcultures and research methods favored by CCCS scholar have come under ever greater scrutiny, they have nevertheless had a lasting impact on subcultural studies as some researchers still view youth cultures predominantly in terms of defiance or resistance.8 As groundbreaking and sophisticated as the CCCS concepts and methods were, they soon drew criticism from various angles. A central one among them was that CCCS scholars projected meanings onto subcultural styles without focusing much on the experiences, values or narratives of the youths themselves. This led critics to wonder, as Andy Bennet states in this volume, whether the CCCS studies did not say ‘more about the ideological position of the researchers themselves than the everyday lives of the young people whom they claimed to research’. But critics also took issue with the CCCS’s essentialized notion of class, the claim that subcultures were more ‘authentic’ and ‘spontaneous’ than mainstream culture, and the statement that the boundaries between subcultures and mainstream culture were firm and fixed. These criticisms informed ‘post-subcultural’ studies in the 1990s, which took the experiences of youths as their starting point, approached authenticity as a social construct, and viewed subcultural identities and boundaries as fluid.9 Thus, David Muggleton preferred ethnographic research over semiotic practices and discovered that subcultural actors experienced subcultural identities to be negotiated and ever-changing.10 8  Among the central CCCS texts are: S. Hall and T. Jefferson (eds.), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976); P.  Cohen, Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community. Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1972); D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979). For critical discussions, see among other: D. Harris, From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: The Effects of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992); Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?’. 9  For important contributions and reflections on post-subcultural studies, see: R. Weinzierl and D.  Muggleton, ‘What is “Post-subcultural Studies” Anyway?’ in D.  Muggleton and R. Weinzierl (eds.) The Post-Subcultures Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 3–23; S. Redhead, Subcultures to Clubcultures: An Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); R. Huq, Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World (London: Routledge, 2006). 10  D. Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style (Oxford: Berg, 2000).

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Subcultural identities and boundaries were not a given of modern society, but were established, negotiated and renegotiated in the process of interaction with other (subcultural) actors. The fact that youths easily moved between subcultural styles led Ted Polhemus to speak of a ‘supermarket of styles’.11 Other approaches have tried to discard the term subculture all along, and instead proposed other concepts in the hope of capturing what youth cultures entail. For example, the terms ‘tribes’ or ‘neo-tribes’ were proposed in order to explain why some adolescents could take part in different youth cultures, migrating from one to the other.12 The ‘scenes’ approach, first coined by John Irwin in 1977, tried to conceptualize to what extent youth cultures were grounded in specific locations, such as bars, street corners or clubs.13 New approaches have, however, not resolved all the previously identified flaws of subculture studies. The scenes and (neo-)tribe approaches only partially render what youth subcultures could entail, namely the sometimes temporary alignment of people with a youth subculture, or the spatial grounding of a youth subculture respectively. Bennet criticizes post-subcultural research approaches in this volume, stating that ‘many of the criticisms directed at subcultural theory have tended to leave the concept of subculture itself intact’, while the concept of subcultures was also introduced by CCCS scholars on the basis of theoretical considerations rather than empirical data. Scholars such as Steve Redhead claim that ‘subcultures were produced by subcultural theorists, not the other way around’.14 Following this line of reasoning, Bennet speaks of a scholarly ‘myth of subcultures’. Patrick Williams, on the other hand, points to the fact that subcultures may be real or not, but that youths themselves continue to self-identify as subcultural. Apparently, a significant number of both subcultural actors and observers hold or believe subcultures to be real, and envision them as groups of 11  T. Polhemus, ‘In the Supermarket of Style’ in S. Redhead (ed.), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 148–151. 12  Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?’. 13  J. Irwin, Scenes (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977); See also: B. Green, ‘Whose Riot? Collective Memory of an Iconic Event in a Local Music Scene’, Journal of Sociology vol. 55 (2018) no. 1, 144–160; K.  Spracklen, S.  Henderson and D.  Procter, ‘Imagining the Scene and the Memory of the F-Club: Talking About Lost Punk and Post-Punk Spaces in Leeds’, Punk and Post Punk vol. 5 (2016) no. 2, 147–162. 14  S.  Redhead, The End-of-the-Century Party: Youth and Pop towards 2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 25.

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people with shared interests, passions and histories. These shared histories—whether they are factually true or not—are part of what ties a subculture together.15 Studying the myth and memory of subcultures may therefore offer a way to move subcultural studies forward.

Myth and Memory Memory studies emerged in the 1980s as an innovative field of historical and cultural research, taking as its premise that scholars should not only focus on past events but also on the ways in which past events are remembered, commemorated, and imagined.16 In doing so, the field built on the work of Maurice Halbwachs, who already in the 1920s stated that people remember past events not only on an individual level but also collectively.17 Even more so, collective identities are, to a large, extent based  on shared memories, imaginations, and stories of past events. Just as subcultures, however, these shared memories are not a given; they are formed and change through the interaction between groups and group members. Because of this, power relations and power dynamics influence what is remembered—as well as what is downplayed or forgotten—and how things are remembered. This reflection led Susan Sontag to state that, ‘strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory’, arguing: ‘What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.’18 Initially organized around the concept of collective memory, memory scholars problematized the term ‘collective’ from the 1990s onwards, arguing that it often remained unclear who belonged to the collective, and 15  For studies on subcultures and memory, see among other: Bennett, ‘Popular Music, Cultural Memory and Everyday Aesthetics’; Green, ‘Whose Riot? Collective Memory of an Iconic Event in a Local Music Scene’; Strong, Grunge: Music and Memory; L. Kube, ‘We Acted as Though We Were in a Movie: Memories of an East German Subculture’, German Politics and Society vol. 26 (2008) no. 2, 45–55. 16  For introductions to memory studies, see: A. Erll and A. Nünning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin  & New York: De Gruyter, 2008); J.K. Olick and J. Robbins, ‘Memory studies. From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology vol. 24 (1998), 105–140. 17  M.  Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Ibid, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper & Row Colophon, 1980). 18  S. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003), 76.

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who could speak for the collective.19 In response to these deliberations, the term cultural memory has become prevalent, referring to ‘that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose “cultivation” serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-­ image’.20 Societies and societal actors continuously debate what should be remembered and how things should be remembered. By approaching memory not only as a social construct but also as a continuous point of contention, memory studies approaches that which is remembered and how things are remembered as the outcome of social and power dynamics. As stated before, shared (and, thus, constructed) memories are not always factually true, but they can nevertheless ‘wield an amazing power on the minds and hearts’ once they are elevated to commonly held beliefs of how past events unfolded and what they mean.21 The same holds true with conceptions of what phenomena ‘essentially’ entail and mean within wider society. The study of myths has recently gained renewed attention from scholars such as Gérard Bouchard.22 According to him, myths are part of the collective imaginary, and establish a link ‘between familiar realities such as norms, traditions, narratives, and identities on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the deepest symbolic structures’.23 It is these characteristics that lend such power to myths. Bouchard therefore speaks of social myths and defines them as ‘sacralized collective representations’ that are shaped through social interactions, in order to ask: ‘Where do they come from? How did they emerge? And how are they reproduced?’24 19  See Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy for a defense of the original term: J.K.  Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi and D. Levy, ‘Introduction’ in J.K. Olick and J. Robbins (eds.), The Collective Memory Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–62. 20  J. Assman and J. Czaplicka, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique vol. 65 (1995), 125–133, 132. 21  G. Bouchard, ‘Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries. Some Afterthoughts’, Philosophy and Public Issues vol. 8 (2018) no. 3, 2–15, 5. 22  As stated earlier, myth studies gained renewed attention as memory studies rose to prominence. For critical discussions on the relation between myth-making and history writing, see: P. Burke, ‘History, Myth, and Fiction’ in J. Rabasa, S. Masayuki Sato, E. Tortarolo, and D. Woolf (eds.), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 3, 1400–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 261–281; L. Cruz and W. Frijhoff (eds.), Myth in History, History in Myth (Leiden: Brill, 2009); J.  Mali, Mythistory: The Making of a Modern Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 23  G. Bouchard, Social Myths, 13. 24  G.  Bouchard, ‘Social Myths: A New Approach’, Philosophy Study vol 6 (2016) no. 6, 356–366, 356.

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Of course, myths as social phenomena have been researched since the early 1900s. Sociologists such as Émile Durkheim and Bronisław Malinowski approached them in functionalist ways and focused on the effects of myths.25 Their research showed how myths play an important part in identity and group formation processes, as they become cornerstones of groups’ value systems and self-identifications. Bouchard, however, focuses more on the question of how representations become sacralized and how the contents or meanings of myths change. Central to his approach is the contention that social actors can introduce and ‘push’ representations such as narratives, ideas and images in strategic ways, but that these representations—once they are embraced by large groups of people—also hold a power of their own. In his research, Bouchard aims to assess both the agency of social actors and of myths in social developments. Shared memories, imaginations, and mythical representations of past and present events are also important aspects of identity formations within subcultures. Here, too, histories and myths are neither given nor fixed; they are constructed, fluid and negotiated. This volume therefore focuses on how subcultural myths emerge, are mythicized, and develop, and asks which developments and actors are central to these processes.

On the Chapters in This Volume This volume takes methodological reflections on subcultures and myth-­ making as its starting point. Andy Bennet is highly critical of the term subculture in reference to what he calls leisure-based youth cultures, claiming that many academics’ usage of the term amounts to ‘little more than a form of lazy theorizing’. According to Bennet, the phenomena that the term subculture refers to ‘are far more complex and multi-faceted than can be explained by simply casting them within the context of subcultures’. His goal, however, is not so much to argue why the term is analytically inadequate, but rather to explain why it has nevertheless remained the ‘dominant analytical trope’ in analyses of youth cultures. As stated earlier, Bennet speaks of the ‘myth of subculture’, claiming that it is academics who introduced the term, embraced it, and held onto it despite its conceptual and analytical shortcomings. 25  See among other: E.  Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, translated by D.  F. Pocock (London: Cohen & West, 1953). (Originally published in 1924); I. Strenski, Malinowski and the Work of Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

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J. Patrick Williams’s chapter could be interpreted as a direct response to Bennet’s work. Acknowledging that the existence of subculture may be a myth, he continues to interrogate the ways in which myths function and the influence that they have on real-life events. Patrick Williams defines myths as stories that (i) describe the origin, history, and/or essential characteristics of a social group or phenomenon, and (ii) are widely held to be true although they are not based in fact. He continues to argue that ‘many empirical studies have found that young people claim to be authentically subcultural’. He thus agrees with Fine and Kleinman, who state that subcultures ‘exist to the extent that individuals see themselves as members of groups’.26 Subcultures may be social constructs, but they are ‘real’ to the extent that people believe in their existence. The theses put forward by Bennet and Patrick Williams have implications for the ways in which subculture research is to be undertaken, and both make suggestions to this end. Bennet proposes to dismiss the term subculture altogether in order to ‘circumvent the potent myths of subculture that currently envelop much of the scholarship’. According to Patrick Williams, researching youth cultures a priori as subcultural is ‘theoretically deterministic’. Even so, Patrick Williams retains that the term subculture is not solely a myth introduced and embraced by academics, but also a lived reality of people who self-identify as subcultural. Because of this, the term itself remains an important aspect of subcultural research. The goal should not be to assess if a subculture is a real-life entity, but what happens when people believe that they are part of it or have identified one as such. Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl’s contribution logically builds on this line of reasoning, as he focuses not on the question whether subcultures really exist, but rather on what people imagine subcultures to be. Focusing on accounts of punk in popular media, Debies-Carl analyzes them as legends, that is ‘“accounts of past happenings” told as though they could be true’. Debies-­ Carl prefers the concept of legend over myth, because legends inspire ‘engagement from the listener and debate over their veracity’. It is exactly this engagement and debate that he wants to analyze, because ‘crucial insights can be gained by examining the conflicting accounts themselves’. In order to do so, he focuses on popular media accounts, and the ways in which people respond to them. He thus cites the efforts of various US American parental self-help groups that tried to find ways to ‘cure’ their 26   G.A.  Fine and S.  Kleinman, ‘Rethinking Subculture: An Interactionist Analysis’, American Journal of Sociology vol. 85 (1979) no. 1, 1–20.

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children of punk, with groups going as far as to recommend ‘that parents confiscate their children’s records, posters, and punk clothing’. Although they may be fictional, Debies-Carl shows that when legends are believed, ‘the outcomes of that legend become real’, which is why studying them is so important. Other case studies contained in this volume also point to a central role of popular media in the making of subcultures and/or their mythical image. Bill Osgerby zooms in on the history of US American Motorcycle Gangs, in particular the Hells Angels, and investigates the importance of popular media in creating their image, stating that ‘the media have been instrumental in shaping the biker’s public image’. CCCS inspired scholarship has claimed that the subversive power of subcultures lay in its underground nature, while the ‘hyping’ of subcultures by mainstream media inherently defused a subculture’s subversive power. According to Osgerby’s research, however, the media’s influence was so far-reaching that it decisively influenced the biker’s identities and sense of self. The bikers, moreover, were not ‘passive dupes’, but talked back, courted the limelight and claimed agency in the image-making process. The interaction between subcultures and media is present from the start and is such an important factor in a subculture’s development that it is impossible to ‘determine a line between subcultural “reality” and media “mythology”’. Just as Debies-Carl, Osgerby advocates a line of research that goes beyond a simple binary between subculture and media. Rather, the interaction between both is to be central in subcultural research. Media also plays a central role in Glen Wood’s analysis of the conflicting representations of the Baltimore dirt-bike riding scene Wild Out Wheely Boyz (WoWBoyz), albeit in a different manner. The WoWBoyz engage in illicit driving through the city’s neighborhoods and post videos online, where they present themselves as cunning bikers who ignore the authority’s attempts to curb dirt-biking in Baltimore. Wood assigns a much less active role to this new form of (online) media, which seemingly functions as a simple node between sender and receiver. But while the WoWBoyz celebrate their subversive image in a playful manner, and gain a global viewership, the city’s authorities become ever more anxious to repress dirt-bike riding in the city as it threatens the city’s brand. In order to legitimize ever harsher measures, the authorities portray the WoWBoyz as a menace to the city. However, while the WoWBoyz and the city’s authorities have opposite goals, their media strategies are seemingly synced, for both ‘the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) actions and the

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WoWBoyz’s response strengthen the scene’s mythos and incentivize continued hostilities’. Again, it is not the debunking of mediatic images that is central, but rather the question how these images are formed and change, and which actors are central in the process. Myths are retellings of past events that, although they may not be based in fact, are commonly believed to be true. Closely related to this concept of myth is cultural memory, which forms the heart of the contributions by Yamil Avivi, Ross Hagen and Jeremy Prestholdt. Avivi analyzes three documentary films to investigate the ways in which the New York City queer club kids scene of the 1990s is remembered. Focusing on the murder of the Colombian American club kid Andre ‘Angel’ Melendez by the ‘king of the club kids’ Michael Alig, Avivi asks what role race plays in the ways in which this dramatic incident is remembered. Avivi argues that all three investigated films portray Alig as the front man of a ‘successful, queer-­ empowered, and lucrative club kid scene while forgetting the racial overtones of his legacy’. In the act of remembering, certain things are remembered while others are forgotten, and in this process race, class and gender identities play a central role. If these ‘whitewashed’ ways of remembering are not questioned, they become generally accepted and thus mythical. Avivi calls on subcultural researchers to always be aware of exclusive practices, both in remembering and in history writing. With regards to his own field of studies, and subcultural memory more generally, he states: ‘[I]t should always be a flag when white(ned) bodies in music scenes are glamorized while bodies of color are non-existent’. When events are so dramatic that they cannot be ignored or forgotten, subcultural actors must find other ways to neutralize these memories or deal with them. Hagen investigates how the current black metal subculture deals with its origin story. Originally a marginal Norwegian scene, black metal gained global notoriety in the early 1990s, due to a number of shocking acts of violence, including arson attacks against Christian churches, the murder of one black metal musician by his bandmate, and the fatal stabbing of a gay man by another scene participant. In part due to the following news coverage, black metal grew into a ‘fully globalized musical style and an integral cog in the international metal music industry’. Acknowledging that for many fans, this violent origin story has become an essential aspect of the subculture’s identity, gaining mythical aspects through its constant retelling, Hagen is left to wonder ‘how to accurately portray the essence and je ne sais quoi of this musical subculture without ignoring its nastier aspects or engaging in an apologia for them’.

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Hagen states that it is crucial to remain critical of the ways in which the early history of black metal is told, and to remain aware of the fact that different retellings imbue it with different meanings and uses, which often serve the purposes of specific actors at particular moments. The fact that memories are fluid and change over time forms the starting point of Prestholdt’s analysis of the changing iconography of Bob Marley. Prestholdt does not only want to show how Marley’s image changed over time, but also which developments and actors were central to this process, including social movements, music fans, and record labels. Prestholdt highlights the interaction between the sender and the receiver, noting that ‘Marley often delivered his messages in parable so layered that diverse audiences could interpret them in various ways’. Indeed, audiences emphasized various aspects of Marley’s image, while his record label responded to this by adapting its marketing strategies accordingly. Even after Marley’s death, his image continued to evolve. Hailed in the 1970s as the voice of Third World liberation, by the 1990s, ‘fans and marketers simultaneously de-emphasized the militant edges of Marley’s message’, portraying him more as a transcendent mystic than a revolutionary. The penultimate section of this volume presents two case studies that explicitly reflect on the practice of researching subcultural myths. Knud Andresen analyzes interviews with former West-German punks in order to analyze the convergences and tensions between the individual and cultural memory of a subculture. Taking cue from Oral History studies, Andresen assesses the individual and collective aspects of remembering, showing how interviews can both work to reify and subvert subcultural myths. Punk subculture has received ample attention from both journalists and academics. But how is one to identify and critically engage with the myths surrounding a subculture that no longer exists and has left almost no trace in popular or academic literature? Richard Foster sets out to do just that, focusing on the Dutch post-punk subculture of the 1980s. Critically reflecting on oral and written sources, Foster reflects on the sensibilities and alertness required to map subcultures and subcultural myths from scratch, stating that ‘the mythology of popular music needs a wider theoretical and historical framework to counter what can be the product of hearsay, fading memory, personal vendettas or industry intrigues’. The two closing chapters of this volume discuss the role of the local and the global in subcultures. In doing so, they show that space, too, can become an aspect of subcultural myths. Popular subcultures such as hip hop have local roots before they gain a global following. In the process of

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globalization, certain aspects of the subculture are amplified while others are downplayed. This dynamic repeats itself when globalized subcultures are appropriated by local scenes. Igor Johannsen analyzes the dynamics and conflicts that emerged when youths in the Middle East appropriated hip hop styles to protest their governments during the Arab Spring protests of 2011. Finally, Thierry P. F. Verburgh examines how the Berlin neighborhood of eastern Kreuzberg attained a mythical subcultural status. Focusing on news reports, travel guides, and personal recollections, the chapter reconstructs how a global audience has come to see eastern Kreuzberg as the ultimate subcultural hot spot. In doing so, the chapter presents a case study of how, through collectively constructed preferences, certain representations of youth culture can give way to myths which are subsequently embraced all over the world. Although this volume illustrates the diversity of research approaches to subcultures—with regard to concepts, methods, and sources—the contributors are in agreement that subcultural myths do not obscure the ‘real’ history of subcultures but are an inherent part of it. As such, they merit research in their own right, for they illustrate how people envision subcultures, what they mean to them, and how social dynamics and actors can work to introduce and modify subcultural myths.

Conclusion This volume sets out to establish how representations of subcultures become mythicized, which developments and actors are crucial to this process, and what meanings are ascribed to these myths, in order to reflect on the question of how researchers of youth subcultures are to deal with these myths. As is often the case in edited volumes, the various authors ask similar questions, but offer a wide variety of concepts, methods and sources to answer them. Differences can among other be seen in the authors’ approaches to subcultures, myths, and actors central to myth-making. To start with, not all of the contributors place a particular subculture at their center. Wood, for example, approaches the WoWBoyz not as a part of a global subculture but as a local scene, in order to analyze the particular local dynamics between the WoWBoyz and the city’s authorities. Prestholdt focuses not so much on a particular subculture, but rather on one iconic figure, Bob Marley, who once was part of a fledgling local subculture, then grew out

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to be a star of Third World movements, and ultimately developed into a more depoliticized pop star. In Prestholdt’s case, focusing on one person enables him to identify various actors that are central to myth-making processes. Furthermore, next to the concept of myth, related concepts are employed by different authors. Debies-Carl, for example, analyzes news accounts of punk not so much as myths but as legends, so as to trace the wide variety of ideas about what punk ‘really’ is about, and how people subsequently act upon these ideas. Avivi and Hagen approach the historical representations of the New York City club kids scene and the Norwegian black metal scene of the 1990s as mythical, but place memory at the heart of their analyses, stressing that forgetting and remembering are driving forces of subcultural myth-making. Finally, the various contributions identify different actors and developments as central to the emergence and development of subcultural myths. Debies-Carl, for example, places popular media at the forefront, while Osgerby highlights the interaction between popular media and subcultural actors. Wood sees the interaction between subcultural actors and authorities as the main factor influencing the development of subcultural myths. The variety in the authors’ usage of concepts, methods and sources is illustrative of the diversity of subcultural studies itself. What connects all the contributions, however, is that neither of them wishes to solely debunk subcultural myths. Instead, it is the myths themselves, their meanings, origins and developments that have become a central concern for subcultural research. Various authors argue that these myths become ‘real’ when people start to believe in them. Contributors as Osgerby, furthermore, argue that myths do not emerge after a subculture has come into being, but that they play a role from the start and can even be instrumental in the emergence of subcultures. Myths are not simply ‘stories’ or representations of social reality, but form an integral part of the lived reality and experiences of many. The myths of subcultures should, equally, form an integral part of the study of subcultural identities and memories.

SECTION I

Conceptual Clarifications

What are subcultures? How are myths researched? And how do people remember subcultures? This first section introduces the reader to the three central concepts of this volume—subcultures, myth and memory—by critically engaging with prominent scholarly traditions and the current state of research. Andy Bennett reconstructs how research on subcultures has developed from the 1970s to the present. This reconstruction takes the form of a critical review: Bennett takes subcultural studies to task for not scrutinizing its definitions of subcultures. Subcultural research took serious shape in the 1970s, when scholars from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) started to analyze contemporary subcultures. They envisioned subcultures primarily as a vehicle for working-class youths to resist cultural domination by the elite. Although later scholars criticized CCCS work for being normative and even speculative, the former often continued to use the term subculture in a very similar fashion. Bennett holds that even post-subcultural studies, which emerged in the late 1990s, are still inspired by traditional definitions of subcultures and thus cannot truly explain ‘socio-cultural practices that are far more complex and multi-­ faceted’. He concludes his review with a call ‘to take a more critical look at the term subculture itself, the reasons for its longevity and apparent “taken-for-grantedness” in much academic scholarship’. J. Patrick Williams traces back how scholarly (i.e. anthropological and sociological) research into myth and memory has developed since the early twentieth century, and how research into subcultures can benefit from this

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scholarly tradition. In doing so, he provides an overview not only of the most important concepts in myth research but also of subcultural studies. Although Patrick Williams is, just like Bennet, critical of the concept of subcultures—he believes them to be imagined communities—he holds that the fact that people believe in the existence of subcultures make them real and worthy of study. It is exactly because of this line of reasoning that myth research becomes a valuable addition to subcultural research. One of the central myths that make subcultures so fascinating and compelling is that they offer an authentic form of self and self-expression. Again, this may be a belief rather than a fact, but because people believe in it, it has real-life effects: ‘Subcultures become authentic when young people imagine them as such, and then act on those meanings’. Through detailed and critical discussions of the concepts of subculture, myth and memory, these two chapters lay the groundwork for the rest of the volume and provide readers with a solid understanding of both the concepts and their scholarly value.

CHAPTER 2

Situating ‘Subculture’: On the Origins and Limits of the Term for Understanding Youth Cultures Andy Bennett

Since the early 1970s, ‘subculture’ has served as a key conceptual frame for sociologists’ and cultural theorists’ accounts of leisure-based youth cultures. While the highly influential work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), where subculture was first applied in the study of style-based youth cultures, has been variously criticized and in some cases rejected as a model, the term subculture itself lives on in post-CCCS work. Despite the arguments of some writers that subculture should be abandoned and replaced with a terminology that more readily connects with the post-structuralist characteristics associated with late modernity, such as ‘lifestyle’ or ‘neo-tribe’,1 subculture remains a dominant analytical trope in academic accounts of youth culture. This is 1  S.  Miles, Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000); A.  Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?: Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, Sociology vol. 33 (1999) no. 3, 599–617.

A. Bennett (*) Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_2

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true even in the case of those theorists who most staunchly oppose the CCCS approach.2 Similarly, Gelder and Thornton’s edited Subcultures Reader, while acknowledging the diverse perspectives adopted in post-­ CCCS youth research, treats the term subculture in a relatively uncritical fashion.3 The purpose of this chapter is not to revisit that subculture should be replaced with an alternative concept, this argument having been firmly established by work appearing under the broad banner of post-subcultural theory,4 but rather to take a more critical look at the term subculture itself, the reasons for its longevity and apparent ‘taken-for-grantedness’ in much academic scholarship. In applying this approach, the chapter will suggest that the term subculture has become little more than a form of lazy theorizing and a means to explain away socio-cultural practices that are far more complex and multi-faceted than can be explained by simply casting them within the context of subcultures. Key to the argument presented in this chapter is that subculture, to paraphrase Durkheim,5 has come to be a regarded as a category of social life that exists sui generis, with much contemporary youth research either failing to acknowledge a need to critically engage with subculture as a meaningful concept or simply starting with the premise of its existence and then working back from there to uncover examples of subcultures in everyday life. The first part of the chapter reviews some of the key work, and criticisms, of the CCCS subculture scholarship and its legacy. Branching out from there, work that is critical of the term subculture itself is also considered, such work bringing to bear an argument often overlooked in subcultural studies past and present, that is, the inherently difficult task of making neat and definable distinctions between the so-called ‘dominant’ and ‘sub’ cultural groupings. Such work, it is argued, throws important light on a broader sociological debate regarding the increasingly plural and

2  See, for example, G. Clarke, ‘Defending Ski-Jumpers: A Critique of Theories of Youth Subcultures’ in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds.), On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (London: Routledge, 1990), 81–96 [Originally published in 1981] and D.  Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style (Oxford: Berg, 2000). 3  K. Gelder and S. Thornton (eds.), The Subcutures Reader (London: Routledge, 1997). 4  A.  Bennett, ‘The Post-subcultural Turn: Some Reflections Ten Years On’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 14 (2011) no. 5, 493–506. 5  E. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method [S. Lukes (ed.); W.D. Halls (trans.)] (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1982) [Originally published in 1895].

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fragmented nature of contemporary culture,6 a process which, ironically, was well underway even as the first post-war youth cultural formations appeared in the 1950s. In the second part of the chapter, a consideration is presented of how subculture as applied in academic work may be better understood as a form of fictional narrative whereby social scientists and other academic theorists and researchers invested in the study of youth have used the term in a way that speaks more to their own research agendas than to actual, or indeed possible, cultural forms in contemporary settings where the essence of culture is so complex and fragmented.

Youth, Subculture and Style As noted briefly above, the concept of subculture acquired ready usage in research on patterns of youth leisure and style through the work of the Birmingham CCCS.7 Borrowing its conceptual rendering of ‘subculture’ from the Chicago School, where it had been used to construct a sociological explanation of youth deviance,8 the CCCS adapted subculture as a means of providing an interpretation of the stylistic responses of working class youth (and primarily male youth) in post-Second World War Britain. According to the CCCS, post-War British youth subcultures, in some cases by dent of their quasi-gang structure, were illustrative of continuing expressions of class-based solidarity among working class youth. Such continuing manifestations of working class consciousness, argued the CCCS, undermined the comments of some observers who suggested that post-­war affluence was creating a classless society.9 Thus, according to Clarke et al.: There is no ‘subcultural solution’ to working-class youth unemployment, educational disadvantage, compulsory miseducation, dead-end jobs, the routinisation and specialisation of labour, low pay and the loss of skills. Sub-­ cultural strategies […] ‘solve’, but in an imaginary way, problems which at the concrete material level remain unresolved.10  D. Chaney, Cultural Change and Everyday Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).  S. Hall and T. Jefferson (eds.), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976). 8  See, for example, R.K.  Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (London: CollierMacmillan Ltd., 1957) and H.S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963). 9  See, for example, F. Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society: Family Life and Industry (London: Heinemann, 1961). 10  J. Clarke, S.  Hall, T.  Jefferson, and B.  Roberts, ‘Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview’ in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals, 9–79, 47–48. 6 7

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A key component of the theory of subcultural resistance developed by the CCCS was the cultural Marxism of Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci. While Gramsci believed that social change on the scale envisaged by Marx was unlikely to occur in advanced capitalist societies, he also argued that social control in any absolute sense became more difficult to maintain, the social relations of capitalism in its more evolved state being characterized by a constant, and often more subtly articulated, struggle between conflicting class interests.11 The result, contended Gramsci, was a shift in the basis of power in capitalist society. The ruling classes were no longer able to maintain power purely on the basis of their economic dominance but also had to exercise their power ‘in moral and intellectual terms’.12 Gramsci referred to this process as ‘hegemonic rule’, hegemony expressing the dominant system of ideas and beliefs through which the ruling classes are able to exert power over society. According to Gramsci, the hegemonic order is susceptible to challenges from below. Although such challenges are in themselves incapable of usurping the ruling classes from their dominant position they can, nevertheless, produce a ‘crisis of authority’.13 Drawing on this idea, the CCCS suggested that working class youth subcultures represented pockets of resistance to the ruling hegemonic order. Through appropriating the stylistic resources of the burgeoning youth fashion market,14 and using them as visual markers of collective group identities based on traditional working class sensibilities such as neighborhood and ‘territory’, or ‘turf’, subcultures issued challenges to dominant institutions such as law enforcement agencies and educational institutions, subcultural style being a clear indicator of resistance against the conformity demanded by the latter. Moreover, according to Cohen, subculture also symbolized a defense of working class community per se in the face of the break-up of traditional working class communities due to post-war slum clearance and the relocation of residents to new housing estates.15

 A. Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1997).  T. Bennett, G. Martin, C. Mercer and J. Woollacott (eds.), Culture, Ideology and Social Process (London: Open University Press, 1981), 198. 13  Ibid., 199. 14  See I.  Chambers, Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985). 15  P.  Cohen, Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community, Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2. (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1972). 11 12

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A subsequent study by Hebdige provided a more elaborate interpretation of young people’s use of style and other resources in what he referred to as semiotic guerrilla warfare.16 Using Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage and Barthes’ concept of signifying practice,17 Hebdige considered how the visually spectacular image of punk rock in late 1970s Britain resonated with the socio-economic climate of an industrial nation in decline. According to Hebdige, punk’s appropriation of domestic items such as safety pins and lavatory chains from their normal everyday contexts and reassembly on the surface of the body, combined with the subversion of conventional norms of fashion—for example, the ripping of clothes for visually provocative effect and the positioning of zip fasteners on the outside of garments—signified the socio-economic dislocation of Britain at this time.

Unsettled Accounts Despite its considerable influence on academic accounts of youth culture, the subcultural theory of the CCCS was contested by a number of theorists.18 For example, McRobbie and Garber pointed out that the CCCS made no consideration of the relationship of girls to youth subcultures.19 Although perhaps male-centered, it was argued, subcultures were by no means ‘exclusively’ male. Female membership of subcultures was clearly evident, for example teddy girls and modettes, and thus, it was argued, warranted consideration by youth researchers. Similarly, McRobbie and Garber identified a teeny-bopper culture among teenage girls which, although apparently confined to the domestic space of the girls’ bedrooms, was argued to constitute a form of subcultural activity in itself.20  D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979).  C. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1966); R. Barthes, ‘The Third Meaning’ in S. Heath (ed.) Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana, 1977), 52–68. 18  There is a considerable number of critical accounts of the CCCS work and I deal only with a small selection here. See also, for example, S. Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock (London: Constable, 1983); S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers [3rd ed.] (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); D. Harris, From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: The Effects of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992); Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?’. 19  A.  McRobbie and J.  Garber, ‘Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration’, in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals, 209–222. 20  Indeed it could be argued that McRobbie and Garber significantly overestimate the ‘hidden’ nature of teeny-bopper culture given the highly visible—and vocal—presence of female 16 17

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Clarke questioned the CCCS’s claim that the ‘so-called’ working class youth subcultures were indeed exclusively, or even primarily, working class.21 The issue of class-based membership, argued Clarke, was always a supposition of the CCCS rather than a proven fact. Waters, in noting the London-centered nature of the CCCS research, criticized its failure to examine other local variations in leisure and style-based youth cultures.22 This view was echoed by Clarke, who suggested that the metropolitan focus of the CCCS functioned to exclude any consideration of the stylistic responses of youth in the provinces.23 Finally, Cohen argued that the CCCS’s lack of empirical engagement with members of youth subcultures themselves severely undermined the empirical validity of the claims made by the center: ‘We do not know what, if any, difference exists between indigenous and sociological explanations […] In the end, there is no basis whatsoever for choosing between this particular interpretation and any others.’24 The lack of empirical evidence to support the CCCS claims concerning the existence of subcultures is an argument that has been repeated many times since the classic CCCS works were published,25 and is arguably something that provides substance to the notion of subcultures as an overused term of convenience and something of a fictional narrative in youth research. This issue will be considered in more depth in the second part of this chapter. While each of the criticisms of subculture noted in the foregoing paragraph are certainly well founded, they each center upon problems associated with the CCCS’s theoretical application of subculture rather than on the concept itself. As with the original CCCS work, the fact of ‘subculture’ teeny-bopper fans at concerts by seventies teeny bopper pop icons such as David Cassidy and the Bay City Rollers. 21  Clarke, ‘Defending Ski-Jumpers’. 22  C.  Waters, ‘Badges of Half-Formed, Inarticulate Radicalism: A Critique of Recent Trends in the Study of Working Class Youth Culture’, International Labor and Working Class History vol. 19 (1981), 23–37. 23  In their comparative research on urban and rural punk scenes in Germany, Hafeneger et al. illustrate some of the distinctive differences in stylistic meaning and response which local experience can generate. See B.  Hafeneger, G.  Stüwe and G.  Weigel, Punks in der Großstadt, Punks in der Provinz: Projektberichte aus der Jugendarbeit (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1993). 24  Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, xvii. 25  See, for example, Muggleton, Inside Subculture and A.  Bennett, ‘Researching Youth Culture and Popular Music: A Methodological Critique’, The British Journal of Sociology vol. 53 (2003) no. 3, 451–466.

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is simply accepted and the validity of subculture as a sociological concept never questioned. This taken-for-grantedness of subcultures as ‘things out there in the world’ continues to feature in more recent studies of youth culture. Muggleton’s work is a good case in point, stating as one of its central aims the rejection of the CCCS’s theoretical framework of subculture with an ethnographic approach designed to uncover the actual meanings and values subscribed to by ‘members of youth subcultures themselves’.26 Similarly, Cagle’s rethinking of Hebdige’s post-CCCS study, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, which focuses on the US glitter rock of the 1970s is primarily concerned with criticizing Hebdige’s notion of incorporation and its implications for the notion of ‘authentic subcultures’.27 Thus, according to Cagle, the music industry’s incorporation of the glitter rock ‘subculture’, rather than ‘destroy[ing] the intentions of authentic subcultural participants’ served to magnify the ‘subversive’ potential of glitter rock.28 A similar problem pertains in Widdicome and Wooffitt’s The Language of Youth Subcultures.29 Although the study rests on the premise that, for much of the time, the CCCS created young people’s subcultural identities for them rather than seeking accounts from young people themselves, in applying conversation analysis in interviews with members of youth ‘subcultures’, Widdicombe and Wooffitt never doubt the existence of subcultures as things in themselves or stray very far away from the conceptual roadmap offered in the CCCS for the identification and theorization of ‘subcultural’ practices among youth. In these and other studies, no critical intervention regarding the meaning or indeed the existence of subcultures is offered. Rather, the reality of subcultures as things out there in the world is simply taken for granted. And one does not have to look far to see how stridently this assumption continues to be accepted in the academic world. An illustrative example of this is seen in the UK-based ‘Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change’, an initiative funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council between 2013 and 2015. As with other contemporary instances of youth cultural research, this Network, despite encompassing a broad range of in many cases highly innovative work,  Muggleton, Inside Subculture, 5 (my emphasis).  Hebdige, Subculture; (1979); V.M.  Cagle, Reconstructing Pop/Subculture: Art, Rock and Andy Warhol (London: Sage, 1995). 28  Cagle Reconstructing Pop/Subculture, 47. 29  S. Widdicombe and R. Wooffitt, The Language of Youth Subcultures: Social Identity in Action (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995). 26 27

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adopts subculture in a largely uncritical fashion and as an umbrella term for the investigation of a diverse range of youth cultures and youth cultural practice both historical and current.

Reconsidering Subculture Despite the significant amount of support for the concept of subculture, not all academic researchers have been so invested in its use as a theoretical framing device. Two years before the publication of Hall and Jefferson’s seminal CCCS study, Resistance Through Rituals,30 an article by Michael Clarke published in the British Journal of Sociology offered the following observation: The term ‘sub-culture’ is one that has been part of sociology for many years, and which, like ‘role’, ‘class’ and ‘charisma’, whether or not it was in current usage before the rise of sociology, is certainly now a feature of everyday language. As such it is very difficult to think critically about it, but I suspect that were it to be introduced today as a new concept in sociology it would be rejected as worthless.31

A key problem with the concept of subculture, according to Clarke, lies in attempting to define where the boundaries lie between ‘sub’ and ‘dominant’ culture. Related to this, he suggests ‘[it] is the extent to which membership of a sub-culture includes all aspects of a person’s life or only parts of it, and whether membership thus constitutes a major component of identity’.32 A similar point is made by Fine and Kleinman who argue: ‘Sociologists have tended to portray subculture as a reified system which refers to a discrete, easily definable population segment, ignoring the difficulties involved in defining the concept.’33 This problem of boundary definition is also raised in McRobbie’s feminist critique of subcultural theory which points to the complete oversight by subcultural theorists of the ‘sphere of family and domestic life’, adding: ‘[F]ew writers seemed interested in what happened when a mod went home after a weekend on speed.  Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals.  M. Clarke, ‘On the Concept of Sub-Culture’, British Journal of Sociology vol. 15(1974) no. 4, 428–441, 428. 32  Ibid., 433. 33   G.A.  Fine and S.  Kleinman, ‘Rethinking Subculture: An Interactionist Analysis’, American Journal of Sociology vol. 85(1979) no. 1, 1–20, 2. 30 31

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Only what happened out there on the streets mattered.’34 McRobbie attributes this oversight to the collective bias of the CCCS youth studies research team whose male-centeredness produced an orientation toward the study of youth deviance rather than the sociology of the family. It follows, however, that the omission of such considerations from the CCCS work has notable implications for the concept of subculture itself. In effect, subculture becomes a forced concept which says more about the ideological position of the researchers themselves than the everyday lives of the young people whom the research claimed to center on. Rather than exploring the tensions and links, for example, between the experience of family life and subcultural membership, subcultures are depicted, in an often crudely articulated manner, as self-contained entities. This view is supported by Jenkins who observes that the concept of subculture ‘implies a determinate and often deviant relationship to a national dominant culture’.35 The problems inherent in trying to delineate such distinctions between ‘subculture’ and ‘dominant culture’ become more apparent when one considers other fields of sociological research in which subculture has been applied as an analytical concept. A notable example here is Macbeth’s early 1990s study of ocean cruising, a phenomenon in which individuals make the choice to give up their normal way of life and become full-time amateur sailors, touring the world in yachts or schooners. Macbeth identifies considerable differences between the ‘subculture’ of ocean sailing and other subcultural formations. Thus, he notes, subcultural norms need not be acquired through face-to-face interaction but can be learned from books and magazines. Given the emergence of the internet since the publication of Macbeth’s work, his observations can also be extended to include the internet. Similarly, Macbeth stresses the more diverse nature of the subculture’s social make-up: ‘Cruisers […] come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds.’36 What Macbeth is describing here is not a ‘subculture’ as it is conventionally understood in youth research. Rather, Macbeth has taken the term and redeployed it to describe a radically different scenario in which socially and economically empowered individuals, 34  A. McRobbie, ‘Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique’, in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds.), On Record: Rock Pop and the Written Word (London: Routledge, 1990), 66–80, 68–69. [Originally published in 1980]. 35  R. Jenkins, Lads, Citizens and Ordinary Kids: Working Class Youth Lifestyles in Belfast (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 41. 36  J. Macbeth, ‘Ocean Cruising: A Sailing Subculture’, Sociological Review vol. 40 (1992) no. 2, 319–343, 322.

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motivated by a variety of different—and indeterminate—factors, actively choose to adopt an alternative lifestyle. Such a manifestation of ‘subcultural’ values is at considerable variance with the infinitely more restricted ‘street corner society’ existence of youth gangs and groups as depicted in the original CCCS work.37 The strategies of ‘resistance’ exhibited by the cruising subculture also differ, both ideologically and physically, from those held to be available to youth subcultures. Thus, observes Macbeth: ‘Cruisers’ social critique shows their intellectual detachment and how the geography of cruising necessitates the physical detachment from the mainstream society or culture.’38 Two points emerge from this brief discussion of Macbeth’s study. First, the failure of subcultural models of explanation to state more precisely what is meant by ‘subculture’ is clearly borne out by the ease with which Macbeth is able to radically redefine the concept to suit the context of his own research. Just as Clarke warned that the ‘spongy’ nature of the word culture makes it very useful ‘in the hands of an expert’,39 so Macbeth’s appropriation of subculture highlights its similar malleableness. Second, given that cultural groups as diverse as neighborhood-based working class youth stylists and middle class ocean cruisers can be termed ‘subcultures’, one is left to ponder exactly how widely the net might be cast? Indeed, it seems evident that the increasing range of activities engaged in by individuals in late modern society is leading to subculture’s use by academic researchers to describe an ever-diversifying range of groups in highly differentiated socio-cultural contexts. In the same light, it is patently clear that what was deemed to make so-­ called working class youth subcultures apparent in the first place, the symbolic appropriation of and play with cultural objects, is actually a far wider game being practiced across the social strata. Although this process has, as noted above, often been identified as the recent product of a postmodern turn,40 a more feasible interpretation of this shift is that it began earlier in the twentieth century as a result of increased cultural production and new mediated forms of culture that began to permeate everyday life from the 1950s onwards.41 Thus, as Chaney observes: 37  See, for example, Cohen, Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community and T. Jefferson, ‘Cultural Responses of the Teds: The Defence of Space and Status’ in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Ritual, 81–86. 38  Macbeth, ‘Ocean Cruising’, 324. 39  Clarke, ‘On the Concept of Sub-Culture’, 428. 40  Muggleton, Inside Subculture. 41  See Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?’.

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The reason why a more intense reflexivity is associated with greater uniformity becomes clearer if it is appreciated that the processes of heightened reflexive consciousness are articulated through textually mediated discourses more generally.42

Since the late 1990s the concept of reflexivity has become increasingly prevalent in studies examining the nature of identity in contemporary societies. As the above observation from Chaney indicates, one critical argument emerging from this scholarship has been that identity, rather than being a merely ‘received’ aspect of human existence is in part a reflexive process of self-discovery in which cultural resources—images, objects and texts—have a significant part to play. Tangible evidence that such a process has occurred and is continuing to occur is provided in the emerging scholarship on identity and aging as this pertains to aspects of music and style. Kotarba, for example, has considered the continuing relevance of rock ’n’ roll music to people who came of age during the 1950s, noting that such individuals have ‘construct[ed] lifestyles and workstyles incorporating rock ’n’ roll’.43 Similarly, Suzanne McDonald Walker’s work on contemporary biker culture demonstrates the latter’s multi-generational, upwardly mobile composition. Indeed, as McDonald Walker observes, it is those ‘in the 30–59 age range […] with disposable wealth and company cars, who now constitute the major profile for motorcycling’.44 Bennett has conducted a comprehensive study of aging music fans, with associations to various scenes including punk, hippy and EDM.45 The individuals interviewed in Bennett’s research span an age range between their late 30s and mid-60s. They also originate from both working class and middle-­ class backgrounds. At present the responses of subcultural theory to these interesting demographic developments in the sartorial aspects of post-­ Second World War youth have yet to be fully realized in print. However, with terms such as ‘aging subcultures’ beginning to make an appearance it seems clear that some form of incorporation of the aging phenomenon  Chaney, Cultural Change and Everyday Life, 24.  J. Kotarba, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Music as a Timepiece’, Symbolic Interaction vol. 25(2002) no. 3, 397–404, 399. 44  S. McDonald-Walker, ‘Fighting the Legacy: British Bikers in the 1990s’, Sociology vol. 32 (1998) no. 2, 379–396, 389. 45  A. Bennett, ‘Punks Not Dead: The Significance of Punk Rock for an Older Generation of Fans’, Sociology vol. 40 (2006) no. 1, 219–35; Ibid., Music, Style and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013). 42 43

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will occur; whether or not this will also extend to socially and economically empowered socially mobile or ‘traditionally middle class’ punks, hippies, ravers and so on remains to be seen. To suggest, however, that a 15 year old, unemployed working class male and a 55 year old university educated female professional form part of a common ‘subculture’ merely because of an expressed love of punk is certainly pushing the conceptual envelope of subcultural theory.

Situating Subculture as a Fictional Narrative Thus far, this chapter has shown how many of the criticisms directed at subcultural theory have tended to leave the concept of subculture itself intact. This even applies in the case of post-subcultural theory where, according to the core argument, it is only the onset of postmodernity that has brought about the ‘end’ of subculture as a meaningful term of categorization (with the obvious implication here being that as a historical term, subculture retains validity). Against this, a weighty scholarship continues to invest in the concept of subculture as an on-going conceptual concern—and apparently in a version of subculture not dissimilar from that proffered by the CCCS in the early 1970s. Indeed, pertinent glimpses of this appear in scholarship that argues against the post-subcultural position, claiming for example that to dispense with subculture is to dismiss any consideration of socio-economic inequality,46 or to strip youth of its capacity for politically motivated action.47 Post-subcultural theory, we are told, eschews the reality of youth existences to instead focus on, and indeed fetishize, practices of cultural consumption. And yet, the act of consumption has been a composite part of the theorizing surrounding the so-called ‘spectacular subcultures’ since the formative work of the CCCS.48 In considering the implications of this for our (re)understanding of subculture as a fictional gloss applied to youth by successive generations of theorists over the years, it is pertinent to draw on the work of another cultural theorist, John Fiske. In discussing the social significance of popular culture, Fiske refers to popular culture 46  T. Shildrick and R. MacDonald, ‘In Defense of Subculture: Young People, Leisure and Social Divisions’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 9(2006) no. 2, 125–140. 47  S. Blackman, ‘Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 8 (2005) no. 1, 1–20. 48  Hebdige, Subculture.

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products as ‘the resources of everyday life’, adding that: ‘Every act of consumption is an act of cultural production, for consumption is always the production of meaning’.49 Fiske is primarily concerned here with commodities and images and it is this focus of concern which has been most readily taken up and developed by theorists seeking to apply Fiske’s ideas in their own work.50 However, the consumer ‘creativity’ identified by Fiske has also been fundamentally important to the way that academics have framed subculture as a conceptual tool, bringing in turn their own creative license to bear in the shaping of the ‘subculturalist’. Short-­ circuiting a fuller consideration of cultural resources as helping to foster new, reflexively nurtured forms of social identity, subculture has been used to relate such identity-making to matters of class, gender, ethnicity and the inequalities associated with the latter. While such matters are of critical importance for social scientists to consider, to suggest that in all cases youth—or as we have now seen a far broader range of individuals—are making use of acquired cultural resources in such a homologically unified fashion is to drastically undermine the capacity of individuals to work with such resources in a more informed and conscious fashion.51 Even a renewed focus on empirical research has not been able to remedy this situation. As noted earlier, one salient criticism made of the original CCCS work on stylized youth ‘subcultures’ was the lack of empirical data collected by CCCS scholars to substantiate the quite extraordinary claims they were making about the significance of youth fashions in the context of post-war Britain. In point of fact, embedded in the CCCS approach was a conceptual agenda that, according to those involved in the research, removed the need for interviews—namely that the socio-­ economic inequalities faced by working class were so deeply inscribed in the social structure that they were essentially invisible to those who were subjected to them.52 In this way, the existence of subcultures became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy—a facet of society that existed because social researchers wanted them to exist as a means of supporting a theory that was already firmly in place. Perplexingly, even as subcultural theory has become more globally established and new styles and genres  J. Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1989), 35.   See, for example, J.  Lull, Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). 51  P. Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routledge, 1977). 52  Harris, From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure. 49 50

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have emerged that command a cross-class and international audience, the concept of subculture continues to be applied by social researchers in a CCCS inspired fashion. The concept has thus seemingly taken on a life of its own as an unquestioned meta-concept that describes, in one word, a vast array of implicit qualities. In effect, a conceptual sleight-of-hand has occurred as the term subculture (without any significant form of redefinition on the part of those using it) has shifted from being a conceptual device used to describe a specific range of youth cultures in a specific time and place (post-war Britain) to a more ambiguously articulated conceptual blueprint that encompasses an infinite range of people, places and contexts. The partially formed meanings inherent in the term subculture—the connotations of ‘non-conformism’ or ‘alternativism’—and the ready-made connections to be made with a range of desired images—streetwise, ‘in-the-know’, cool, select, etc.—make subculture a very attractive term in the hands of researchers. Through their on-going appropriation of ‘subculture’, academic researchers draw on a largely accepted legacy in order to engage in what often amounts to a form of ‘lazy theorizing’. Exactly what phenomena are being presented as ‘subcultures’ or ‘subcultural’ is rarely properly explained. Rather, in most cases an unbroken chain of conceptual reasoning is proposed and applied in a way intended to connect successive generations of youth, and indeed post-youth individuals, that represents them as ‘pure subcultural beings’ out there in the world and waiting to be discovered by academic researchers who have already decided what they are and what they stand for.53 What does seem clear, however, is that an academically seductive process of ‘myth making’ has developed as researchers tell ‘subcultural’ stories to each other. Within this practice, the criticisms of theorists such as Cohen that subcultural explanations are brought to the table ready-made, and without empirical evidence to support such claims, are neatly sidestepped.54 Thus, it is increasingly the case that subcultural accounts are brought to the table with empirical evidence that has been systematically shaped to fit an already established overarching belief in the existence of subcultures by researchers. The defense, deemed as ‘viable’ now as it was in the 1970s, is 53  A. Bennett, ‘“Speaking of Youth Culture”: A Critical Analysis of (Post)Youth Culture in the New Century’ in D. Woodman and A. Bennett (eds.) Youth Cultures, Transitions and Generations: Bridging the Gap in Youth Research (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015), 42–55. 54  Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

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that ‘subculturalists’ would not see or regard themselves as ‘subculturalists’ and that as such it is the license of the academic researcher to add this conceptual gloss. In this way, the theorizing is allowed to run away with itself. Even as societies become increasingly complex, what is actually happening—how people belong, how they include and exclude each other, how they acquire and re-produce rituals of everyday life—are frequently being explained away using ‘subculture’ as a frame of reference. And as ‘subculture’ persists as a myth of collective, ‘non-mainstream’ cultural belief and practice, so it also gathers increasing momentum among institutions seeking to isolate and stigmatize particular behaviors as deviant or anti-social. To name but two examples of youth style and taste that have been subject to such ‘deviant’ subcultural myth making at an institutional level, ‘rave’ and ‘goth’ ‘subcultures’ have been targeted by the media since the 1990s due to isolated examples of anti-social or criminal behavior. In each instance the actions of the individuals concerned have been offered up in ways designed to suggest to the general public that they are examples of more typical practices associated with these ‘subcultures’, further enforcing the social stigma attached to these groups and leading in some cases to hate crimes being perpetrated against individuals who associate with them.55

Conclusion This chapter has examined the ongoing use of the term subculture in works on youth and youth culture. After reviewing the classic subcultural studies of the Birmingham CCCS, it discussed the various criticisms subsequently directed at this work. Despite the shortcomings argued by critical studies to have featured in the CCCS’s analysis and representation of youth, the term ‘subculture’ itself was rarely challenged. Indeed, work critical of CCCS scholarship more often than not perpetuated the use of subculture as a conceptual framing device. The following section of the chapter focused on studies not associated with the CCCS’s work that offer a more critical appraisal of subculture, one salient facet of such work being its identification of problems associated with accurately demarcating a sub- and dominant culture divide. The final part of the chapter offered a preliminary explanation of why subculture nevertheless continues to hold 55  D.  Garland, ‘“It’s a Mosher Just Been Banged for No Reason”: Assessing Targeted Violence Against Goths and the Parameters of Hate Crime’, International Review of Victimology vol. 17 (2010) no. 2, 155–157.

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such currency and resonance in academic research on youth, particularly that relating to patterns of youth taste in music and style. Despite the existence of work that problematizes the division of culture into sub- and dominant categories, much of the current ‘subcultural’ scholarship appears to uncritically reproduce the subcultural narratives of old, thus embracing subculture as a conceptual blueprint that can be used to describe a varied and often random range of objects, situations, people and images. As such, ‘subculture’ has become a mode of lazy theorizing whereby academic researchers rely on the legacy of the term, choosing to elide work that is critical of subculture’s validity as a concept and instead represent sections of youth, as well as ‘post-youth’, as unequivocally subcultural. The term has thus become part of a fictional narrative in which the supposed real-life existence of subcultures becomes a self-fulling prophecy. Although the myth of subculture has thus become a dominant trope in social sciences and humanities research for many decades, the concept has by no means been universally adopted by researchers. Even before the emergence of post-subcultural theory, a number of highly influential studies, among them Willis’s works on British youth and youth cultures which offered deeply insightful readings of different youth contexts without taking recourse to subculture as a conceptual framework.56 Tolnen and Salasuo and Poikolainen have shown how Finnish youth research, having briefly adopted a subcultural perspective, subsequently abandoned this approach as it was considered incompatible with the nature of Finnish youth, and indeed the wider Finnish society, due to its tight focus on social stratification as a means of studying and accounting for (youth) cultural practices.57 It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that given the existence of other conceptual approaches available to study youth, and the increasingly tentative fashion in which subcultural explanations are being justified in many examples of contemporary scholarship, new conceptual models could be realized that circumvent the potent myths of subculture that currently envelop much of the scholarship being produced in the field of youth and (post) youth cultural studies.  Willis, Profane Culture.  T.  Tolonen, ‘Youth Cultures, Lifestyles and Social Class in Finnish Contexts’, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research vol. 21(2013) no. 1, 55–75. and M.  Salasuo and J. Poikolainen, ‘From Local Cliques to Subcultures and Late Modern Youth: Interpretations of Young People’s Group Behavior in Finnish Youth Research’ in T.  Hoikkala and M.  Karjalainen (eds.) The Finnish Youth Research Antology 1999–2014 (Helsinki: Finnish Youth Research Society/Network, 2016). 56 57

CHAPTER 3

Myth and Authenticity in Subculture Studies J. Patrick Williams

In September 2018 I attended the European Sociological Association’s RN30 midterm conference, which dealt with the concepts that sociologists of youth use to make sense of empirical reality. As the conference program stated: We claim to ‘know’ young people by using conceptual lenses. […] While the reflexive turn has sensitized youth researchers, there is a risk […] that some [theories and concepts] become orthodoxies that naturalize particular ways of thinking about, problematizing and celebrating young people. […] There is a constant need to be reflexive towards the concepts and traveling discourses we use to understand young people’s experiences […]

Two presenters asked rhetorical questions to get participants thinking more about the relation between concepts and knowledge. The first questioned the extent to which scholars project their academic preoccupations onto youth experiences, letting preexisting theories or assumptions shape the research process. The second presenter asked why some concepts

J. P. Williams (*) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_3

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outlive their empirical usefulness and then answered his own question in part by speaking about ‘ubiquitous citations’ and ‘must-read texts’, referring to scholarship that gains canonic status within the field. Both presenters were asking us to question the extent to which paradigms, theories or concepts are mythologized within the field of subculture studies. Taking up such questions, in this chapter I argue that the relevance of the concept of subculture lies at least partly in the creation and circulation of myths about its authenticity. In making this statement, my claim is, first, that subcultures are significant—by which I mean that the subculture concept stands out as worthy of use and development. The very book in which this chapter exists, and other books like it, demonstrate that ‘subculture’ continues to hold academic attention.1 Second, subcultures are embedded in larger discourses of authenticity. Rather than as mere manifestations of global consumer culture or as dysfunctional group cultures, subcultures are often framed as authentic and legitimate forms of collective expression in their own right. Finally, the significance and authenticity of subcultures has been communicated through myths created and diffused in part by academics. Myth and authenticity are complex concepts that need to be unpacked if we are to gain a nuanced understanding of how scholars mythologize the authenticity of subcultures. For example, what do I mean by ‘myths’, and how are they created and circulated? Myth is not a word typically associated with contemporary subcultures, and a keyword search for studies on subcultures and myth returns very few results.2 A search for subcultures and authenticity on the other hand will return dozens of studies, from marketing research on consumer subcultures,3 to studies on how subcultural youths frame themselves vis-à-vis mainstream culture,4 to 1  See J.P.  Williams, ‘Subculture’s not Dead!: Checking the Pulse of Subculture Studies through a Review of “Subcultures, Popular Music and Political Change” and “Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives”’, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research vol. 27 (2018) no. 1, 1–17. 2  For an exception, see for example, K.  Spracklen, C.  Lucas and M.  Deeks, ‘The Construction of Heavy Metal Identity through Heritage Narratives: A Case Study of Extreme Metal Bands in the North of England’, Popular Music and Society vol. 37 (2014) no. 1, 48–64. 3  M.B.  Beverland, F.  Farrelly and P.G.  Quester, ‘Authentic Subcultural Membership: Antecedents and Consequences of Authenticating Acts and Authoritative Performances’, Psychology and Marketing vol. 27 (2010) no. 7, 698–716. 4  E. Hannerz, Performing punk (New York: Palgrave, 2016); P. Lewin, and J.P. Williams, ‘The Ideology and Practice of Authenticity in punk Subculture’ in P. Vannini and J.P. Williams (eds.), Authenticity in Self, Culture and Society (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 65–83.

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issues of embodiment and identity,5 and beyond. I will first introduce the concept of myth. In particular, I will highlight how the anthropological and sociological conceptions of myth were developed within a realist social science tradition. Second, I will bring authenticity into the discussion and argue that the myth of authentic subcultures is something that academics themselves have played no small part in creating and sustaining. In the third section, I focus on key texts from the influential Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), which I argue mythologized working-class youth subcultures as authentic reactions to bourgeois culture and which have had a lasting effect on the field. Finally, I look at post-subcultural theory’s attempt to demythologize subcultures and highlight the benefits of turning to theories of identity to improve our understanding of authenticity in subcultural life.

Myth Dictionaries typically define myths in two ways. First, they are stories that describe the origin, history, and/or essential characteristics of a social group or phenomenon. In this definition, myths are like legends; they narrate the sometimes unique or extraordinary and sometimes mundane circumstances in which a group or phenomenon was formed, and often simultaneously codify its quintessential qualities. This rather functional definition can be seen in early anthropology and sociology, as represented in the works of Émile Durkheim, Bronisław Malinowski, and the generations  of scholars that immediately  followed them. Second, myths are defined as widely held but false beliefs or ideas, misrepresentations of reality, or as stories that refer to fictitious or imaginary aspects of a group’s or phenomenon’s origin, history or characteristics. This definition aligns with the critical and structuralist approaches of scholars such as Roland Barthes, which were crucial in the development of cultural studies. If the first definition suggests that myths have an important cultural function, then the second definition implies that such a function may be a problematic one.6

5  C. Driver, ‘Embodying Hardcore: Rethinking “Subcultural” Authenticities’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 14 (2011) no. 8, 975–990. 6  There may be other definitions that circulate in various fields, but the two I discuss here seem to be common in both sociological and lay usage.

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Realism and the Function of Myth Some of the earliest social science studies framed myths as a type of ‘collective representation’ of social and cultural life. Proposed originally by the sociologist Émile Durkheim,7 collective representations refer to social groups’ conceptions of reality and the shared knowledge they develop about themselves and others. Collective representations are not simply the sum of individual perspectives from within a social group, but rather are an objectification of the meanings shared by the group as a whole. Durkheim described myths as part of a ‘unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say […] beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community […] all those who adhere to them’.8 He saw myths as more than what individuals collectively believed, but rather as articulations of shared, typically taken-for-granted knowledge that framed a social group’s engagement with the world. The anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski went further and marked myths as a special kind of narrative told within or about a group that was both ‘fundamental and vital – something a [group] needs, and without which it cannot materially persist’.9 In these early functionalist articulations, myths were narratives that shaped a cultural group’s present and future by laying out the cultural foundations upon which its relations and collective actions could be built. Malinowski found myths about a cultural group’s origins especially noteworthy. As he wrote, ‘events of the mythological past play a leading part in moral conduct and social organization’.10 His essay, ‘Myth as a Dramatic Development of Dogma’, includes a story of a religious subculture that emerged around a woman who gave birth to sickly twins. She had prayed to St. Theresa to spare the children in return for her faithful worship in the wash-house in the backyard. When the twins survived and subsequently flourished, news of the miracle spread and soon the wash-­ house became a small chapel, which could not hold the growing numbers 7  E.  Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy [D.F.  Pocock trans.] (London: Cohen & West, 1953). [Originally published in 1924]. 8  Ibid., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1965), 44. [Originally published in 1915]. 9  I. Strenski, Malinowski and the Work of Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), xix. 10  B. Malinowski, ‘Myth as a Dramatic Development of Dogma’ in Strenski, Malinowski and the Work of Myth, 117–127, 119.

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of people who came to worship there. What Malinowski wanted to demonstrate was the extent to which an origin myth could function as ‘a new rallying point for belief and new tradition’ among members of  a newly emerging cultural group.11 The extent to which the content of the story was true or accurate did not necessarily matter for the anthropologist. The myth was significant not for its truth, but for its function, and its function, according to Malinowski, was to establish dogmatic beliefs. Scholars not only study the myths that cultural groups create about themselves, they create myths about cultural groups as well. In contemporary research, questions about the origins of subcultures (how do they emerge, from where, and why?) and about their coherence (what are their core characteristics, what binds members together?) are often handled as key bits of information that provide insight into those cultures and their subscribers. Consider reports on the straightedge subculture, which has been studied extensively since the 1990s. Across a range of academic texts, we can find rather cohesive narratives that feature the subculture’s origin and core qualities: The straightedge youth subculture is primarily a North American phenomenon that emerged during the early 1980s amidst the American punk rock subculture milieu. Both the print and television news media purport that straightedgers adhere strictly to a philosophy and lifestyle characterized by opposition to alcohol, drugs, casual sex, and perceived forms of animal exploitation.12 Straight Edge began [in 1981] when ‘positive youth’ attending the concerts of the band, Minor Threat, legitimized drug-free practices among a sector of American youth. […] Currently, the Straight Edge subculture attracts primarily suburban youths, who resolutely abstain from alcohol, tobacco and other drug use, and who attend ‘hardcore’ concerts.13 Straightedge grew out the 1980s hardcore punk scene. Most agree that the lyrics from a Minor Threat song by clean-living lead singer Ian MacKaye launched it. […] Clean-living practices bond and bind subculture members

 Ibid., 117.  R.T. Wood, ‘“Nailed to the X”: A lyrical history of the straightedge youth subculture’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 2 (1999) no. 2, 133–151, 133. 13  D. Irwin, ‘The straight edge subculture: Examining the youths’ drug-free way’, Journal of Drug Issues vol. 29 (1999) no. 2, 365–380, 366. 11 12

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[and] a superior moral identity is implicitly claimed through control of body and mind.14

None of the scholars who wrote this information were present during straightedge’s subcultural emergence, but rather relied on a variety of data from insider and outsider sources. Equally important, none of them sought to essentialize the straightedge subculture. Quite the opposite— the authors individually show the extent to which understandings of the subculture may be flexible or even contested. But through patterned (re) telling, such narratives bundle information into sets of ‘facts’ or ‘truths,’ essentializing the subculture’s origin and key characteristics. In doing so, they inadvertently risk creating a sense of an objectively real and simplistically coherent subculture. Each of the quotations above highlights when straightedge emerged, links straightedge to punk/hardcore music culture, and frames straightedge as a value-oriented lifestyle movement. They further specify core subcultural values or norms that intentionally set the subculture in opposition to other youth and/or mainstream cultures. Claude Lévi-Strauss hypothesized that myths function not by conveying individual bits of information, but by conveying many bits of information together.15 That ‘Straight Edge’ is a song produced in 1981 is a bit of information. That some young people reject casual sex and drug use is a separate bit of ­information. That some young American punks rejected drugs and sex in the early 1980s, and came together and formed a coherent subcultural lifestyle named after the song Straight Edge is a myth. It may be tempting to interpret this statement in terms of myth’s second definition and thus to assume that I am claiming that the examples above are fictitious or that they somehow misrepresent the origins or culture of straightedge, but that is not my point. My point is rather that, because these texts bundle and communicate specific information about straightedge, its origins and core characteristics, they become something like, in Malinowski’s terms, a ‘rallying point’ around which subsequent collective work may proceed.

14  P.  Nilan and S.  Threadgold, ‘The Moral Economy of the Mosh Pit: Straight Edge, Reflexivity and Classification Struggles’ in S.  Baker, B.  Robards and B.  Buttigieg (eds.), Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 77–87, 77. 15  C. Lévi-Strauss, ‘The Structural Study of Myth’, Journal of American Folklore vol. 68 (1955) no. 270, 428–444, 431.

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Structuralism and Myth The structural semiotician Roland Barthes also recognized myth as a special type of communication, and more specifically as ‘a mode of signification’ that had wide-ranging effects on cultural  groups. However, he viewed myths differently from earlier scholars such as Durkheim and Malinowski in at least three important ways. First, he did not limit myths to oral  narratives. Myths could be communicated through any type of discourse, including written text, visual imagery, sports, music, performance, and so on. Second, Barthes developed a semiotic theory of myth that drew heavily on the structuralism of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure rather than on the ethnographic study of everyday life.16 Saussure had differentiated between the everyday use of language (i.e., the production of speech, which he called ‘parole’) and its underlying system or rules (i.e., the grammatical structure of a language, which he called ‘langue’). Barthes followed this distinction and, like de Saussure, saw the underlying structure of myths as the more important of the two. This meant that Barthes did not see myths in terms of their meanings for people, but instead in terms of their position within abstract systems of signification. The third difference in Barthes’ work was that it aligned with the second definition of myth I described in the introduction—as a distortion or misrepresentation of reality. For Barthes, myths did not belong to everyone; they were created—sometimes intentionally, other times unintentionally—by specific cultural producers such as politicians or advertisers who had vested interests in preferred understandings of reality. Such a conception highlights his critical predilections. Instead of seeing culture as something that met the needs of all of a cultural group’s members, Barthes saw myths as ideological tools that brought into being and/or maintained status quo definitions of reality. These definitions were never ‘authentic’, but were instead products of ideologies that distorted reality. In a well-known example, Barthes described a magazine image in which ‘a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted,

16  For Ferdinand de Saussure: F. de Saussure, ‘Nature of the Linguistic Sign. Cours de linguistique generale’ in D.H.  Richter (ed.), The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends [2nd ed] (Boston: Bedford, 1998), 832–835. [Originally published in 1916].

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probably fixed on a fold of the tricolor’.17 Barthes saw this image (like many others available in popular culture) as mythological—as carrying significance rather than just meaning. For him, ‘the black soldier saluting the French flag’ was ostensibly the meaning of the image. Yet that meaning, when connected to an implicit yet purposeful ideology (a ‘mixture of Frenchness and militariness’), resulted in a unique significance to the image, namely ‘that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors’. Crucially, Barthes argued that myths were not necessarily knowingly produced to distort reality. In the example above, he argued, a news editor might have chosen the image simply because it presented the ‘truth’ of French multiculturalism and equality, and not because he or she intended to manipulate readers’ beliefs. Likewise, the typical consumer might unwittingly interpret the same ‘truth’. Barthes’ main point was that such discourse was not in fact ‘authentic’, but was ideological in nature. Most people were allegedly unable to realize the ‘distorted’ nature of such discourse, yet there were those few in society who could. Most notable was a category of people that Barthes called ‘readers’ of myths, able ‘to connect mythical schema to a general history […] in short, [able] to pass from semiology to ideology [to] reveal [myth’s] essential function’.18 Enter the CCCS as a simultaneous reader and producer of subcultural mythology.

The CCCS, Authenticity, and Subcultural Myth-making British scholars affiliated with the CCCS, founded in 1964, became interested in distinctive youth cultural formations that arose in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its predominantly macro-structuralist orientation, represented in Resistance through Rituals (1976) and Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), became a popular and well-cited approach in the study of youth subcultures.19 In his seminal studies on mod and punk, 17  R. Barthes, Mythologies [A. Lavers, trans.] (New York: Hill and Wang Publishers, 1972), 115. [Originally published in 1957]. 18  Ibid., 127. 19  S.  Hall and T.  Jefferson (eds.), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in PostWar Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976); D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979).

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Hebdige provided thoroughly enthralling descriptions that suggested they were real rather than interpretations. There was little in his writing to suggest that mods, for example, could be anything except ‘working class teenagers who lived mainly in London and the new towns of the South and who could be readily identified by characteristic hairstyles, clothing etc.’.20 Hebdige would go on, he wrote, ‘to analyze the origins of this style in the experience of the mods themselves by attempting to penetrate and decipher the mythology of the mods’.21 The resulting analyses of mod and later punk have been treated as de facto statements on the authenticity of subcultural styles.22 It is not coincidental that Hebdige invoked the concept of mythology in the quote above. CCCS scholars collectively were actively engaged with the structural semiotics of Barthes and Lévi-Strauss, as well as the ideological theories of structuralist and critical scholars such as Gramsci, Lacan, Althusser, and others. Phil Cohen had delivered an influential paper at the CCCS in which he combined structuralist and critical theory concepts to explain the origins of British youth subcultures.23 ‘Using […] Althusser’s theories of ideology as a “real” and unconscious force seducing people via hidden determinations, he rearticulated Lévi-Strauss’s theory of myth into an explanation of how subcultures magically resolve social contradictions through multiple narratives of bricolage in the form of style, symbols and ritual.’24 Beginning with an essentialized notion of class as the 20  D. Hebdige, ‘The Meaning of mod’ in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals, 87–98, 87. 21  Ibid., 88. Deleting ‘the experience of the mods themselves’ from this last statement would more accurately describe his work. At no point did Hebdige report on subculturalists’ experiences directly. In fact, it was not clear where his data came from. His objective, matterof-fact style very much represented a mythological approach to the meaning of subcultures and style. 22  The CCCS approach to subculture became dominant, such that despite my own research on subcultures tending to be micro and ethnographic rather than structural or semiotic, I have had blind reviewers demand on multiple occasions that I cite either Hall and Jefferson’s Resistance Through Rituals or Hebdige’s Subculture because I was discussing subcultures. Other subculture ethnographers have shared similar stories with me. In one case where I explained to an editor that I was specifically not citing Hebdige because my work was not aligned with his paradigmatic approach, the editor proceeded to insert the citation and reference after the manuscript had been accepted. 23  P.  Cohen, Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community, Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2. (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1972). 24  S. Blackman, ‘Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism’, Journal of Youth Studies vol. 8 (2005) no. 1, 1–20, 5.

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fundamental feature distinguishing social groups, CCCS scholarship proceeded to mythologize post-War subcultures as representations of ideological struggles among working-class youth, their ‘parent’ working-class culture, and dominant, bourgeois culture.25 It is here that the concept of authenticity becomes relevant alongside myth, for in various ways the CCCS framed subcultural origins as spontaneous, ‘authentic’ expressions of the ideological strain working-class youths experienced as they were caught up in larger class-cultural struggles. We can connect subcultural myths to authenticity in two ways. First and as previously discussed, CCCS scholars took a realist ontological perspective when it came to describing subcultures. This is not surprising given that ‘the idea that each culture contains a certain authentic essence and that it is the task of the researcher to lay bare this essence has long been the sine qua non’ in the cultural sciences.26 Second, CCCS scholars conceptualized working-class subcultures and their styles as attempts to recapture collective self-authenticity. Working backwards through Clarke, Hall, Jefferson and Roberts’ (1976) theory of subcultures, we see that: subcultures represented symbolically (i.e., stylistically) the problems associated with young people’s transition into adulthood in a capitalist system that was class based;27 young people’s working-class position meant that they were most likely to labor in menial and unfulfilling ways; menial, wage-based labor alienated individuals from their creativity; creativity was, in critical theory, the basis of being an authentic human being. Thus, the styles of working-class subcultures were seen as authentic, though ultimately ‘magical’ or ineffective, attempts at creative expressions of the human self-essence.28  Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals.  No author, ‘Editorial’, Etnofoor vol. 17 (2004), no. 1–2, 5–6. 27  J. Clarke, S.  Hall, T.  Jefferson, and B.  Roberts, ‘Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview’ in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals, 9–79. 28  See Petrović for an in-depth discussion of four aspects of Marx’s alienation, involving people’s alienation from labor activity, from the products of their labor, from other people related to them in the labor process, and ultimately from their own self-essence. Marx conceived of self-essence in terms of productive creativity; that is, creation was the essence of being authentically human. But because rationalized labor resulted in a working class that produced for others rather than for itself, its members experienced alienation, which Marx theorized as the antithesis of authenticity: ‘Man [sic] is in essence a creative, practical being, and when he alienates his creative activity from himself, he alienates his human essence from himself.’ G.  Petrović, ‘Marx’s Theory of Alienation’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research vol. 23 (1963) no. 3, 419–426, 421. 25 26

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The quest for authenticity continues to be a significant individual and collective imperative, visible in the discourses of psychology, religion, education, ethics, business, and elsewhere.29 The authentic self has been allegedly under attack in contemporary societies rife with feelings of cultural disorientation and personal meaninglessness. Alienated from their ‘true selves’, people struggle, sometimes across a lifetime, to come to terms with feelings of inauthenticity in their day-to-day lives. Awash in contemporary discourses on the need to be authentic, individuals seek out meaningful narratives through which to make sense of themselves, others, and the social worlds in which they live.30 Where might individuals find such narratives? Culture industries play an important role in mythologizing the therapeutic nature of cultural consumption. Retailers offer authentic products and services, tourist brochures promote authentic travel experiences, while artists struggle to produce authentic work.31 However, these culture industries are often seen as lacking the authenticity they purport to offer people, especially when their authenticity claims clash with for-profit orientations and mass production strategies.32 From the critical theory tradition of the 1950s and 1960s in which the CCCS had based its work, the great danger was the growing passivity of the working-class, which increasingly relied on ‘inauthentic’ consumerism as a salve or remedy for its politico-economic woes.33 It was from this rather pessimistic view of the relation between the 29  Vannini and Williams, Authenticity in Self, Culture and Society. J.P.  Williams and K.C. Schwarz (eds.), Studies on the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity (London: Routledge, 2020) see https://www.crcpress.com/Studies-on-the-Social-Construction-ofIdentity-and-Authenticity/Williams-Schwarz/p/book/9780367136765 30  E.J. Arnould and L.L. Price, ‘Authenticating Acts and Authoritative Performances’ in S. Ratneshwar, D.G. Mick and C. Huffman (eds.), The Why of Consumption: Contemporary Perspectives on Consumer Motives, Goals, and Desires (London: Routledge, 2003), 140–163. 31  J.T.  Eastman, ‘Authenticating Identity Work: Accounts of Underground Country Musicians’, Studies in Symbolic Interaction vol. 35 (2010), 51–67; A.T. Duque, ‘Body, Space, and Authenticity in Shakira’s Video for “My Hips Don’t Lie”’ in T. Miller (ed.), Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 2010), 301–307; K. Olsen, ‘Authenticity as a Concept in Tourism Research’, Tourist Studies vol. 2 (2002), no. 2, 159–182. 32  M.B.  Beverland, ‘Brand Management and the Challenge of Authenticity’, Journal of Product and Brand Management vol. 14 (2005) no. 7, 460–461. 33  M. Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno, ‘The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception’ in G.  Schmid Noerr (ed.), Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments [E. Jephcott, trans.] (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 94–136. [Originally published in 1944].

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producers and consumers of mass culture, with its backdrop of cultural hegemony and working-class disenfranchisement, that the CCCS pinned its hope onto post-War youth subcultures. According to the CCCS, working-class youth were among the least controllable groups in society because they were not yet fully socialized into the hegemonic system that sought to repress them. Because of this, they were able to exercise resistance and autonomy (the latter linked etymologically to authenticity), though they did so in ritualistic ways. Operating as Barthian ‘readers’ of myth, CCCS scholars like Clarke and Hebdige utilized Lévi-Strauss’s concepts of bricolage and homology to suggest that subculturalists collectively subverted the dominant cultural meanings of capitalist commodities by transforming and rearranging them into styles that carried new, unanticipated meanings rooted in youths’ focal concerns.34 So for example, CCCS scholars claimed that Teddy Boys took the upper-class Edwardian suit and the Western bootlace tie out of their original consumer contexts and rearticulated, subculturally, the demands of young lower-working-class men to become visible and taken seriously by the rest of society.35 Likewise, the mods were said to have transformed the middle-class scooter, the medicinal amphetamine, and the white-collar suit into an ensemble that ‘seemed to consciously invert the values associated with smart dress, to deliberately challenge the assumptions, to falsify the expectations derived from such sources’.36 The CCCS inscribed youth subcultures with originality and genuineness, hermetically sealed in structuralist semiotics where the voices of subcultural youths were nowhere to be found. A Barthian mythology of youth subcultural authenticity was perhaps never so clearly created by academics. Interested in exposing the ideological significance of subcultural styles over and above their meanings in everyday life, the CCCS used 34  J. Clarke, ‘Style’ in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals, 175–191; Hebdige, ‘The Meaning of mod’; Ibid., Subculture. 35  T. Jefferson, ‘Cultural Responses of the Teds’ in Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals, 81–86. 36  Hebdige, ‘The Meaning of mod’, 88. Homology referred to the relationship among ideology, image, and practice within a cultural group. Visual styles ‘must have the “objective possibility” of reflecting the particular values and concerns of the group’ (Clarke, ‘Style’, 179). Styles also enabled ‘the members of a subculture [to] speak a common language […] [they] say the right things in the right way at the right time. [Styles] anticipate or encapsulate a mood, a moment’ (Hebdige, Subculture, 122).

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structuralism as an ‘articulating principle which, upon unifying the various ideological elements from the discourses of subaltern groups […] and forming from them a unified ideological system, became a hegemonic principle’ of its own.37

Subcultures: From Authentic Styles to Authentic Identities The myth of authentic youth subcultures as narrated by the CCCS was not accepted unequivocally, with critiques emerging from various vectors. Perhaps the best known critiques came from the postmodern or ‘post-­ subcultures’ perspective that developed during the 1990s, and as the latter name suggests, its thesis was that subcultures had been a myth that needed to be purged from sociological vocabulary. Beginning with ‘clubcultures’, scholars argued that the coherence of subcultures as suggested by CCCS theory failed to accommodate the breadth of classed, raced, gendered, and consumptive processes that coincided with postmodern conceptions of fluid identities, negotiated authenticities, and porous scenes.38 New work described youth culture in terms of a ‘supermarket’ of styles that were available ‘over-the-counter’.39 The emphasis on club music scenes celebrated youths’ hedonic practices, which were pitched as agentic and affirmative rather than as ‘magical’ or impotent.40 At the same time, scholars

37  V. Ramos, ‘The Concepts of Ideology, Hegemony, and Organic Intellectuals in Gramsci’s Marxism’, Theoretical Review no. 27 (March–April 1982). Online at: https://www.marxists. org/history/erol/periodicals/theoretical-review/1982301.htm. [Accessed on 25 June 2019]. 38  S.  Redhead, Subcultures to Clubcultures: An Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). 39  T. Polhemus, ‘In the Supermarket of Style’ in S. Redhead (ed.), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 148–151; B. Best, ‘Overthe-Counter Culture: Retheorizing Resistance in Popular Culture’ in Redhead, The Clubcultures Reader, 18–35. 40  See among other S.  Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1996); Redhead, Subcultures to Clubcultures; A. Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?: Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, Sociology vol. 33 (1999) no. 3, 599–617; R. Huq, Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World (London: Routledge, 2006).

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moved back toward studying youth styles via more direct interaction with youths, as had been done in the early Chicago School tradition.41 Bennett, for example, supported his call for the abandonment of the subculture concept with empirical research on an urban dance music scene, where he discussed stylistic aspects of music such as sampling as well as a variety of visual styles among scene participants.42 Because the styles of this particular group of dance club participants were not as coherent as those the CCCS had codified among different groups of youths decades earlier, his conclusion was that subculture  was an unworkable analytic tool. Weinzierl and Muggleton similarly argued that ‘the potential for style itself to resist appears largely lost, with any ‘intrinsically’ [i.e., authentically] subversive quality to subcultures exposed as an illusion.’43 For post-­ subculture scholars, the coherent and resistant qualities of style were what had made subcultures authentic in the first place, and while their critiques challenged coherence and resistance, they nevertheless continued to operationalize youth cultures almost exclusively in terms of style, thereby maintaining at least one aspect of CCCS orthodoxy. What they did question though was the significance of identity. For much of the twentieth century, sociologists had tended to assume that the identities of subcultural participants were just as coherent as their alleged styles. Hannerz notes that subculture scholars have a habit of offering ‘rather uncomplicated image[s] of [both] styles and identities, ordered through a subcultural set of meanings’.44 Post-subculture scholars pointed out however, that youth identities were far more complex than what the CCCS suggested when they dichotomized a ‘monolithic mainstream’ vs ‘resistant subcultures’.45 The complexity of identity and style was taken up by scholars such as Muggleton, who studied an eclectic mix of young adults, some of whom self-identified as subcultural and some of whom did not.46 He found that young people’s styles and identities were reflexively 41  K.  Gelder, Subculture: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (London: Routledge, 2007); J.P.  Williams, Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2011). 42  Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?’ 43  R.  Weinzierl and D.  Muggleton, ‘What is “Post-subcultural Studies” Anyway?’ in D. Muggleton and R. Weinzierl (eds.) The Post-Subcultures Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 3–23, 5. 44  Hannerz, Performing punk, 3. 45  Weinzierl and D. Muggleton, ‘What is “Post-subcultural Studies” Anyway?’, 7. 46  D. Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style (Oxford: Berg, 2000).

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managed rather than de facto truths.47 However, he interpreted their reflexivity in profoundly postmodern terms, arguing that contemporary youths ‘do not have to worry about contradictions between selected subcultural identities, for there are no rules, there is no authenticity, no ideological commitment, merely a stylistic game to be played’.48 Ideological overdeterminism was being replaced with subjectivist overdeterminism. Redhead had written  a decade earlier that ‘“authentic” subcultures were produced by subcultural theorists, not the other way around’.49 If there were no rules, no authenticity, no commitment, but only style-as-­ play, it is no wonder there could be no subcultures. This is the post-­ subcultural myth of the death of subculture, but it is far from representative of youths’ experiences in the twenty-first century. Data demonstrate that many young people continue to explicitly self-identify as subcultural50 and empirical studies have found that young people claim to be authentically subcultural, while denying that status to others.51 So how can subcultures be a myth given the relevance of the term in young people’s everyday lives? By defining subcultures only in terms of coherent styles, post-­ subculture scholars needed only to find a lack of coherent style in some 47  See also S. Widdicombe and R. Wooffitt, ‘“Being” Versus “Doing” punk: On Achieving Authenticity as a Member’, Journal of Language and Social Psychology vol. 9 (1990) no. 4, 257–277 and J.P. Williams, ‘Authenticity and the Dramaturgical Self’ in C. Edgley (ed.), The Drama of Social Life: A Dramaturgical Handbook (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 93–107. 48  Muggleton, Inside Subculture, 47. 49  S.  Redhead, The End-of-the-Century Party: Youth and Pop towards 2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 25. 50  See e.g., Muggleton, Inside Subculture, 56, 88–89. 51  There are too many relevant studies of subcultural identity and/or authenticity to list here, and a search for ‘subculture’ and ‘identity’ will provide as many post-subcultural as subcultural analyses. But for a few examples, see: K. McLeod, ‘Authenticity Within Hip-Hop and Other Cultures Threatened with Assimilation’, Journal of Communication vol. 49(1999) no. 4, 134–150; R.  Haenfler, ‘Collective Identity in the Straight Edge Movement: How Diffuse Movements Foster Commitment, Encourage Individualized Participation, and Promote Cultural Change’, Sociological Quarterly vol. 45 (2004) no. 4, 785–805; A. Jasper, ‘“I am not a goth!”: The Unspoken Morale of Authenticity within the Dutch Gothic Scene’, Etnofoor vol. 17 (2004) no. 1–2, 90–115; J.P. Williams, ‘Authentic Identities: Straightedge Subculture, Music, and the Internet’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 35 (2006) no. 2, 173–200; Driver, ‘Embodying Hardcore’; Hannerz, Performing punk; P. Hodkinson and J. Garland, ‘Targeted Harassment, Subcultural Identity and the Embrace of Difference: A Case Study’, British Journal of Sociology vol. 67 (2016) no. 3, 541–561; J.  Xiao and J.  Stayner, ‘Culture, Boundary, and Identity: A Comparison of Practices between Two Online punk Communities in China’, Chinese Journal of Communication vol. 27 (2016) no. 3, 246–263.

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empirical cases to claim there was no subculture. Further, by relying largely on studies of popular dance music scenes rather than on studies of youths who were positioned in more clearly problematic relations to dominant/ mainstream culture, their generalization that subcultures were no longer relevant to young people outpaced the empirical evidence. In addition, post-subculture scholars largely ignored social/collective identification in favor of personal or subjective articulations of self. If one studies young people who do not self-identify as subcultural, then it is highly unlikely that the subculture concept would emerge as a relevant concept. However, subcultures do ‘exist to the extent that individuals see themselves as members of groups. Subculture and identification should be understood as dialectical processes, each of which is implicated in the construction and reconstruction of the other.’52 From this perspective, an identity casts a person ‘in the shape of a social object by the acknowledgement of one’s participation or membership in social relations’.53 Identities are established either through a person announcing herself as a certain kind of social object (e.g., ‘a goth’ or ‘a skateboarder’), or when others place her/him as such. From here, we can modify Redhead’s claim that authentic subcultures were produced by scholars instead of by subculturalists themselves to say that, in addition to the identities scholars attribute to young people, young people also identify themselves. The CCCS objectified subcultural identities by tying them down in a structuralist theory of style, but youths themselves can and do create their own definitions of identity and authenticity. Authenticity is still a myth, but not a ‘distortion’ of objective reality. Instead, it is a narrative produced by members of subcultural groups that subsequently becomes a functional resource for making claims about reality and the social world, including the validity of who they are.54

52   G.A.  Fine and S.  Kleinman, ‘Rethinking Subculture: An Interactionist Analysis’, American Journal of Sociology vol. 85 (1979) no. 1, 1–20. 53  G.P. Stone, ‘Appearance and the Self’ in A.M. Rose (ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 86–118. 54  S.  Widdicombe, ‘“But You Don’t Class Yourself”: The Interactional Management of Category Membership and Non-Membership’ in C.  Antaki and S.  Widdicombe (eds.) Identities in Talk (London: Sage, 1998), 52–70; J.P.  Williams, ‘Perceiving and Enacting Authentic Identities’ in W.  Brekhus (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press).

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Shifting the focus from the significance of styles to meanings of identities returns researchers to the pragmatic dimensions of young people’s everyday lives. This is part of the ‘reflexive turn’ in youth cultures and subcultures research, which questions how etic versus emic perspectives inform sociological understandings of youth cultures and subcultures.55 Reflexivity involves becoming aware of at least two research relationships. First is perhaps the more obvious—the relationship between the researcher and the researched, which is often ‘obscured in social science texts, protecting privilege, securing distance, and laminating […] contradictions’.56 Second is the relationship between the scholar and what s/he considers to be theoretical, methodological, and empirical canon. Cairns discusses tensions in both of these relationships in his research on the Orange marching band culture of Northern Ireland.57 He found that the reality of the research situation did not match with what canonical knowledge on the subject had led him to expect and decided that, rather than force an etic description that lined up with older scholarship, he would develop a more nuanced understanding by focusing on participants’ own understandings. Similarly, in a recent project on young Muslim women in Southeast Asia who wear the hijab (i.e., headscarf), a colleague and I found it necessary to explicitly deal with our own etic assumptions and biases. Given our intent to write about issues of social control, we at first assumed it would be a straightforward matter to analyze our data by relying on our knowledge of the subcultures, deviance and religion literatures. As we collected more data, however, we found that different social actors held very different opinions about the hijab, including about its stylistic and religious functions. Despite our initial intentions, critical reflection helped us decide that labeling the phenomena we were studying as simply ‘subcultural’ would have been a mistake. Rather than be theoretically deterministic, we studied what meanings the hijab held in various situations 55  S.  Blackman and M.  Kempson (eds.), The Subcultural Imagination: Theory, Research, and Reflexivity in Contemporary Youth Cultures (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 65–79. 56   M.  Fine, L.  Weis, S.  Weseen and L.  Wong, ‘For Whom? Qualitative Research, Representations, and Social Responsibilities’ in N.K.  Denzin and Y.S.  Lincoln (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research [2nd ed.] (Sage: Thousand Oaks, 2000), 107–131, 108. 57  D. Cairns, ‘Learning from Experience: An Example of Youth Ethnography and Reflexive Research Practice’ in A. Allaste and K. Tiidenberg (eds.), ‘In Search of…’ New Methodological Approaches to Youth Research (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 283–294.

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and for various individual and institutional actors. We subsequently theorized how those actors were relying on a variety of myths about the hijab and its wearers, and were satisfied to conclude without having authenticated any particular definition of hijabista or hijabster subculture or identity.58

Conclusion In this chapter, I have explored how theory and research have mythologized subcultures as ‘real’ phenomena with objectively defined origins and coherent ideologies and styles. These myths circulate among scholars, promoting taken-for-granted images that shape how we imagine those subcultures. I spent some time reviewing examples of mythologized representations from subculture studies, with specific focus on the structural semiotics of the CCCS. Structuralism assumes that relevant meanings are inherent or fixed within youth styles and practices, and that their ideological significance can be decoded through a mythological reading. As such, structuralism renders only speculative findings that are detached from the lives of young people. The CCCS substituted a series of deductions for facts, and in doing so wrote a history of youth subcultures that served its own theoretical purposes; it created legends out of kids who were probably just searching for some personal and collective meanings within the emerging landscape of capital-dominated media  and leisure cultures. Post-subcultural theory attempted to demythologize the  authenticity of subcultures by destroying them altogether.59 It overemphasized the individual, maintained a rigid focus on style, and ignored the existence of many groups of young people that continue to be marginalized and/or non-normative in outlook. What was missing was a reflexive approach to studying cultural meaning in everyday life. Reflexive studies have shown that the authenticity of subcultures does exist in the minds of many young 58  J.P. Williams and K.M. Nasir, ‘Muslim Girl Culture and Social Control in Southeast Asia: Exploring the Hijabista and Hijabster Phenomena’, Crime, Media, Culture vol. 13 (2017) no. 2, 199–216. 59  A.  Bennet, ‘Australian Subcultures: Reality or Myth?’ in S.  Baker, B.  Robards, and B. Buttigieg (eds.), Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 11–20.

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people today. A focus on identification enables us to see subcultures’ continuing significance for them. It is simply a matter of recognizing that authenticity is not objectively real, but is a myth—a product of and resource for collective meaning-making. As cultural sociologists have noted, ‘authenticity itself can never be authentic, but must always be performed, staged, fabricated, crafted, or otherwise imagined’.60 Subcultures become authentic when young people imagine them as such, and then act on those meanings.

60  D.  Grazian, ‘Demystifying Authenticity in the Sociology of Culture’ in J.R.  Hall, L. Grindstaff, and M.C. Lo (eds.) Handbook of Cultural Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2010), 191–200, 192.

SECTION II

Media, Myths and Subcultural Actors

What role do media play in the creation of subcultural myths? How do subcultural actors and the media interact? And how should researchers investigate this dynamic? It has long been held that media plays an important role in the development of subcultures. Media-fueled moral panics have often elicited firm responses from both authorities and the public. Subcultural actors have often reveled in media attention, while at the same time claiming that the media is incapable of painting an honest picture of the experiences and drives of subcultural actors. This leaves researchers with pressing questions as to the value of media sources for subcultural research. Although media reports are often biased, incomplete and sensational, they nevertheless have major influence on how subcultures are seen. The following three chapters analyze the dynamics between media and subcultures in three particular cases, in order to reflect on how these dynamics can be reconstructed and what value media reports hold for subcultural research. Jeffrey Debies-Carl proposes to approach popular media reports on punk as legends, thus centering his analysis on the premise that punk legends demand ‘engagement from the listener and debate over their veracity’. Media reports may be biased and exaggerated, but they nevertheless prompt action from subcultural actors, the public and authorities. By zooming in on how people respond to media images, rather than on debunking the media images themselves, he opens new roads for subcultural research.

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Bill Osgerby, too, holds that media play a central role in the development of subcultures and people’s responses to them. Focusing on the US American motorcycle group Hells Angels, he observes that media were instrumental in the rise of the group, thus dismissing the notion that subcultures emerge in the underground before they are discovered by media and thrown in the spotlights. Central to his analysis is the fact that subcultural actors do not passively undergo media attention, but actively engage with the media: talking to journalists, interacting with media outlets and courting the limelight. Osgerby’s claim is that one should not only focus on how media portrays subcultures, but also on how subcultural actors interact and influence media reporting. Room should thus be given to the subcultural actors’ agency. Glen Wood provides one extreme example of how situations can spiral out of control when subcultural actors try and take control over their own media image. Central to his analysis is the case of the Baltimore Wild Out Wheely Boyz (WoWBoyz), a dirt-bike riding group that regularly drives through the streets of Baltimore and post videos of their escapades online. In doing so, they have created a hype around their craft and directly reach a growing audience. Fearing for the city’s global brand, the authorities respond with ever-harsher measures to ban dirt-biking from the city. In order to legitimize these measures, the authorities turn to the media to draw an image of the WoWBoyz as a scene of deviants. Again, this study shows how important media is for the development of subcultures, and that both authorities and subcultural actors actively engage with the media to influence the image of subcultures. Together, these three chapters provide an overview of the various ways in which subcultures and media interact, and how this interaction influences media reporting and subcultural images. Furthermore, all three chapters propose ways to analyze these interactions and the resulting media reports and images.

CHAPTER 4

Punk Legends: Cultural Representation and Ostension Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl

Subcultures give rise to conflicting representations both in popular media and in scholarly investigations. Several interpretations have been offered to explain the great variety of descriptions and analyses. For example, this might simply be a product of changes over time,1 but further explanation is needed when we consider that variation exists even when controlling for time and place. Even in the same nation, during the same time period, any particular subculture will frequently be depicted in diverse and conflicting ways. In fact, the descriptions and analyses can vary so much that some question the very idea of coherent subcultures. If there is so much diversity, it has been suggested, then perhaps there is no such thing as a stable and identifiable subculture at all.2 Thus, while understanding the basic character of a subculture should in theory be relatively simple, in practice 1  For example, see J. Davies, ‘The Future of “No Future”: Punk Rock and Postmodern Theory’, Journal of Popular Culture vol. 29 (1996) no. 4, 3–25. 2  A.  Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, Sociology vol. 33 (1999) no. 3, 599–617.

J. S. Debies-Carl (*) University of New Haven, West Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_4

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the attempt proves more difficult. In attempting to do so, one immediately encounters a range of diverse and conflicting claims that make a simple description all but impossible. However, these difficulties may be of unexpected value. Crucial insights can be gained by examining the conflicting accounts themselves—rather than treating them as obstacles barring the way to a fuller understanding of the subculture in question. In this chapter, I propose an approach to understanding conflicting subcultural representations that is rooted in the nature of storytelling and retrospective accounts. This is premised on the idea that while facts matter, so do beliefs. The things people believe—whether tentatively or whole-heartedly—have real consequences regardless of whether the precipitating belief is based on fact. I therefore argue that representations of punk—whether found in the media or in scholarly reports3—can be fruitfully understood as a sort of ‘legend’. Among folklorists, legends are ‘accounts of past happenings’4 told as though they could be true regardless of whether they actually are.5 Different legends can thus provide competing or even contradictory claims about the same subject. Legends—which typically contain secular content6—inspire engagement from the listener and debate over their veracity,7 distinguishing them from other narrative forms. Fairy tales and literature, for example, are understood to be fictitious, whereas myths are fully believed and contain sacred stories.8 Two further characteristics of legends help explain why legends can engage audiences and why they tend toward wide dissemination: (1) they express social values or concerns, and (2) they can have real outcomes. Legends make compelling claims that resonate strongly with people’s concerns and worldviews. Because of this, some people may react to a legend as though

3  In the interest of informing future research, I emphasize scholarly truth claims in this discussion to understand how it plays a role in this process similar to more frequently criticized accounts from the media. 4  B. Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 167. 5  L. Dégh, Legend and Belief (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). 6  J.H. Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meanings (New York: Norton, 1981). 7  Dégh, Legend and Belief. 8  W. Bascom, ‘The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narrative’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 78 (1965) no. 307, 3–20. Outside of folklore, ‘myth’ has taken on a derogatory connotation as a definitively false fable. See D.E.  Goldstein, S.A.  Grider, and J.B.  Thomas, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007).

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it was true. This is a process called ostension.9 These imitative actions might be intended to mitigate a legend’s perceived threats, test its veracity, or even act it out and so enable the individual to become a part of the legend themselves. Because the legend sparked belief, the outcomes of that legend become real—become fact—through people’s actions. This can occur even if the legend itself was not true to begin with and even if there are contradictory versions of the same legend in circulation. For example, in the United Stated during the 1970s, there was a growing fear regarding claims that sadistic adults were contaminating Halloween candy with poison or razor blades to harm children.10 Despite an absence of documented cases, these legends spread widely throughout the nation and their effects can still be felt today. Best and Horiuchi famously argued that this legend proliferated because it resonated with concerns that social research found to be increasing: crime was on the rise, strangers could not be trusted, and children were no longer safe.11 The threat conveyed became more plausible because it invoked popular concerns. Listeners became engaged with the plausible danger, discussed it intensely, and took action in the form of x-raying candy, launching awareness campaigns, keeping children home on Halloween night, and so forth. Responses to an imaginary threat imply that the legend is true. With so many people reacting, it looks like they are reacting to something real. Over the years these safety precautions have themselves become part of Halloween tradition. Yet, some people treat the legend as real by acting it out. Some children have tampered with their own treats,12 and at least one adult poisoned his son’s candy after hearing the legends.13 These participants retell the legend through action, entering into the narrative and taking on the role of its various characters. Most participate as heroic defenders of children, but some children have chosen to act out the role of victim, and some adults opt for the villain. All serve to perpetuate the legend and bring it to life. 9  L. Dégh and A. Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite? Ostensive Action: A Means of Legend-Telling’, Journal of Folklore Research vol. 20 (1983) no. 1, 5–34. 10  Ibid. 11  J.  Best and G.  Horiuchi, ‘The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends’, Social Problems vol. 32 (1985) no. 5, 488–499. 12  B. Ellis, ‘“Safe” Spooks: New Halloween Traditions in Response to Sadism Legends’ in J. Santino (ed.), Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 24–44. 13  Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’

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A Tale of Two ‘Punks’ Like many legendary subjects, the origins of punk are shrouded in mystery or, at least, considerable contestation. Depending on what source one turns to, punk may have started in the mid-1970s in New York,14 during the late 1970s in London,15 or as a synthesis of regions, including less-­frequently cited places like Australia.16 Even the origin of the name ‘punk’ is debated while its meaning is polysemic. According to Lentini, the name implies a number of characteristics including ‘male homosexuality, violence, inexperience and prostitution’,17 while Leblanc states that it indicated ‘a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian’.18 Tellingly, even punk’s death causes heated debate. Declarations that ‘punk is dead’ have been pronounced nearly since punk’s inception.19 Savage declared that by 1979, ‘Punk was over. Humpty Dumpty had fallen off the wall and there was no way of piecing him together’.20 For Savage, it was clear: The Sex Pistols had disbanded, Sid Vicious was dead, and the election of Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government marked the end of the cultural moment in time. Conversely, testaments to the continued survival of punk are nearly as old.21 One variant on a popular slogan documented by Leblanc in the mid1990s quips: ‘Punk’s not dead, it just smells that way.’22 Meanwhile, more recent exposés23 and studies24 of punk continue to be regularly published. 14  L. McNeil and G. McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (London: Grove Press, 1997). 15  R.D.  Dixon and F.R.  Ingram, ‘The Cultural Diffusion of Punk Rock in the United States’, Popular Music and Society vol. 6 (1979) no. 3, 210–218. 16  P.  Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins: Anglo-American Syncretism’, Journal of Intercultural Studies vol. 4 (2003) no. 2, 154–174. 17  Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 154. 18  L.  Leblanc, Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boys’ Subculture (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 35. 19  D.  Clark, ‘The Death and Life of Punk, the Last Subculture’ in D.  Muggleton and R. Weinzierl (eds.), The Post-Subcultures Reader (New York: Berg, 2003), 223–236. 20  P.541 in J. Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1992). 21  J.  Pareles, ‘Critic’s Notebook: Is Punk Rock’s Obituary Premature?’, The New  York Times, 24 April 1996. 22  Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 33. 23  See for example M. Diehl, My So-Called Punk: Green Day, Fall Out Boy, The Distillers, Bad Religion. How Neo-Punk Stage-dived into the Mainstream (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007). 24  See for example J.S. Debies-Carl, ‘Print is Dead: The Promise and Peril of Online Media for Subcultural Resistance’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 44 (2015) no. 6, 679–708. Indeed, an academic journal devoted exclusively to the study of punk—Punk &

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Disagreements over punk come with the territory. Nonetheless, there is something approaching a consensus that something widely recognizable as ‘punk’ existed in mainstream awareness by the late-1970s that was especially evident in New York and London.25 Another shared feature of most narratives is the conditions into which punk was born, kicking and screaming, on either side of the Atlantic. Punk’s birth is ‘almost universally linked […] to a perceived deterioration of the English [or American?] economic structure’.26 Punks were ‘clearly a product of their times and a reaction to recession and unemployment’.27 Similar conclusions were reached by ethnographic research that examined individual punks. Field reports typically indicate that punks were ‘youth who do not have the experience [required] for better jobs and who do not wish to take […] low-status, low-wage employment’.28 Punk veterans themselves are in rare agreement over the conditions that led to the emergence of punk. Thus, ‘The Proletariat’, a Boston-based band, summed up punk attitudes toward future prospects in the song, ‘Options’: ‘Tell me the options: military service, factory employment, welfare assistance. Options, options’.29 Readers may question even these modest claims, but that is the nature of legend: intense debate and contestation.30 Issues of origins aside, to some it is important to understand exactly what punk was (or is) like: its essential characteristics. In attempting this, not surprisingly, we promptly encounter a mass of claims and counter-claims that rival the issue of origins in contentiousness. There is no shortage of seemingly historical, but often conflicting sources to draw on: ‘a plethora of books […]; the quantity of documentaries on radio and TV […] the number of articles in the press’.31 With this in mind, the next section will provide two synthetic, Post-Punk—was launched in 2012. See https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/viewJournal,id=200/. (accessed 4 September 2018). 25  R. Sabin, ‘Introduction’ in R. Sabin (ed.), Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1–13. 26  R.H.  Tillman, ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’, Popular Music and Society vol. 7 (1980) no. 3, 165–175, 167. 27  A. Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair: A Symbolic Interpretation of Punks and Skinheads Usage of Barbiturates’, Social Science & Medicine vol. 19 (1984) no. 9, 929–38, 932. 28  S.W. Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences: The Street Culture of Punks’, Youth & Society vol. 21 (1989) no. 2, 207–237, 233. 29  Proletariat, ‘Options’, This is Boston not L.A., Modern Method Records MM 012 (studio album; 1982). 30  Dégh, Legend and Belief. 31  Sabin, ‘Introduction’, 1.

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legendary accounts of what punk was. The first section considers legends that claim punks are ‘villains’: delinquents and criminals who threaten society. The second, by contrast, portrays punks as heroes, as noble non-­ conformists fighting for a better society. These portrayals of punk are particularly interesting to compare for two reasons. First, over the years these have been among the most popular representations of the subculture. Each is a readily available and culturally significant description of punk, garnered from popular culture, the media, and especially scholarship. Second, each portrayal makes claims about punk—and each claims to be true—yet the two portrayals are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. Despite this fact, by comparing these two accounts, we will see how contradictory representations can both be true, in a sense, through the process of ostension.

Punk Villainy What, exactly, is a punk? How can we recognize one in the wild? According to ‘villainous’ accounts, we can visually identify one. Scholarly accounts, among others frequently begin with vivid descriptions of punk fashion and emphasize the significance of style. They include laundry lists of now-­ familiar stereotypes. Punks sport ‘“freaky” multi-coloured hairstyles, torn tee-shirts, swastikas, bondage trousers and safety pins’.32 Hebdige’s description is worthy of a deranged Dr. Seuss: ‘There was a chaos of quiffs and leather jackets, brothel creepers and winkle pickers, plimsolls and paka macs, moddy crops and skinhead strides, drainpipes and vivid socks, bum freezers and bovver boots—all kept “in place” and “out of time” by the spectacular adhesives: the safety pins and plastic clothes pegs, the bondage straps and bits of string which attracted so much horrified and fascinated attention.’33 Identifying a punk might be important because, according to villainous accounts, punks are known to cause many problems, ranging from the annoying to the deadly. Not all punks are equally deviant, but according to villainous accounts, those who are the most punk are considered so because they are the most deviant.34 First, punk lifestyle involves a wide  Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 930.  D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge 1979), 26. 34  Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences’; K.J. Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders: The Social Organization of a Counterculture’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 16 (1987) no. 3, 344–370. 32 33

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range of delinquent behaviors. Younger members of the subculture who should be in school are habitually truant. In one study, ‘[o]nly nine of the 24 members [studied] who gathered outside attended school. All but one had histories of dismissal and departure’.35 Not only do punks avoid school, they also avoid work and tend toward homelessness. Sociologist Kathryn J. Fox’s much-cited investigation of a punk bar in the American southwest examined what it meant to be a ‘real’ punk. She noted that nearly all of the most dedicated punks, ‘the hardcores[,] were unemployed and lived in old, abandoned houses or moved into the homes of friends for short periods of time’.36 Indeed, ‘squatting’ on other people’s property is a common practice that causes considerable consternation to outsiders. Aggressive panhandling provides punks with income and entertainment. They frequently harass passersby for money or food: ‘Members requested bites of hamburgers, some French fries, or a “sip” of a soft drink from passersby’.37 Other activities include selling drugs, ‘dumpster diving, […] pan handling, stealing, hustling, and prostitution’.38 Beyond selling drugs, punks are notorious for using them. Fox emphasizes sniffing glue, a drug that is as cheap and lowly as punk itself.39 In their report on squatter punk communities, sociologists Ranaghan and Breese discuss ‘cocaine and heroine’ but also ‘the primacy of alcohol’.40 Psychiatrist A. Burr provides a colorful account in his exploration of punk drug use, discussing how barbiturate use is emblematic of the subculture since ‘[v]ery heavy users [become] oblivious to the world, commonly neglect themselves and their social relations’. The logical conclusion is that ‘[n]ot infrequently they overdose and die’.41 While the drug of choice may change, always we find that punks and drugs are inextricably linked within villainous accounts. Aggression is one of the hallmarks of punk life according to villainous sources. ‘From the beginning […] hostility and mayhem […] became part

 Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences’, 215.  Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’, 354. 37  Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences’, 220. 38  C. Ranaghan and J.R. Breese, ‘Punks and Crusties: Analysis of the Squatter Community’, Sociological Imagination vol. 40 (2004) no. 1, 31–53. 39  Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’. 40  Ranaghan and Breese, ‘Punks and Crusties’, 42. 41  Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 935. 35 36

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of the punk image’42 and it has since been ‘continually linked’ with violence.43 This image is so fundamental to portrayals of punk that, in their field study of a punk scene in a western Canadian city, sociologists Leslie W. Kennedy and Stephen W. Baron describe it as one of the first things researchers should notice: On entry into the field it became immediately apparent that members were involved in a great deal of violence, both as victims and offenders. Interviews revealed that they rolled, or mugged, people for money and other attractive items, and were involved in violence with members of other delinquent groups and the general public. Most members carried weapons, usually knives or canes. Some boasted guns, but these were never carried. Instead, they were hidden back at a friend’s house. During the field study there were on average two violent incidents a week.44

Ultimately, one primary claim underlies all such details: the claim that punks are violent and aggressive. One last, indispensable component of villainous portrayals is ‘bondage and sexual fetishism’45 or, more generally, ‘[p]unk’s glorification of sexual deviance’.46 Indeed, drugs, violence, and deviant sexuality are commonly reported together as a sort of unholy trinity. The Oral History of Punk is something of a chronicle of punk dysfunction, including tales like the following told by former Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone: Connie was very naughty, she had a thing about knives and broken bottles and she’d just go at anyone if she was in the wrong mood, and one night she went after me. I was with [Nancy Spungen] one night, and Connie came there and found me in bed with Nancy. So Connie stabbed me because I was fucking Nancy. But Connie didn’t give a shit cause she just stole Nancy’s collection of silver dollars and sold them to get some dope. Connie just said, ‘Let’s go get high.’ I said, ‘Alright.’ So we left Nancy there.47 42  H.G. Levine and S.H. Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols: Punk Rock as Reflexive Subculture’, Youth & Society vol. 14 (1983) no. 4, 417–435, 423. 43  Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 166. 44  L.W.  Kennedy and S.W.  Baron, ‘Routine Activities and a Subculture of Violence: A Study of Violence on the Street’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency vol. 30 (1993) no. 1, 88–112, 98–99. 45  Levine and Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols’, 422. 46  Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 935. 47  McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 269.

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This excerpt, with its added sense of authenticity owing to the narrator ‘who was there’, encapsulates in a nut shell a villainous portrayal of punk. While scholarship was somewhat restrained in describing the dangers of punk, no such restraint was shown in popular culture. Television shows warned parents of the threat to children. During the 1980s, situation comedies like Alice or Silver Spoons aired episodes of families dealing with the embarrassment of children becoming punk. Like most shows of this sort, the ‘crisis’ is resolved when ‘the character came back to his or her senses and returned to “normal”’.48 More dramatic were films like Sid and Nancy,49 which claims to be the true story of former Sex Pistols bassist, Sid Vicious, and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. It portrays participation in punk as a long descent to the bottom, a runaway train of misbehavior leading to death. Punks are out-of-control, constantly breaking things, spitting, fighting, and doing drugs. The film climaxes with Sid stabbing Nancy during a fight and, since he is so high, he does not even realize it. He ignores her cries for help and takes a nap. By the end of the film, both are dead, living on only as cautionary tales of punk’s perils.50 Other visual portrayals of punk were outright apocalyptic. Television shows like Chips and Quincy, ‘portrayed young punk rockers as barbarian hordes seething with violence and rage, either destroying others or themselves. Punks were literally killers chased by good-guy cops’.51 Even more dramatic was the film Class of 1984. It tells a paranoid, cautionary tale about the new generation of kids, represented by punk, who have run amok and now threaten the very soul of civilization. With no respect for education or authority, they practice organized crime and commit all manner of deviant acts: theft, drugs, vandalism, prostitution rings, fighting, and sexual assault—often all at the same time.  C. O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk: More than Noise! (San Francisco: AK Press, 1999), 42.  A. Cox (dir), Sid and Nancy (1986). 50  Whether this is actually what happened, appropriately, is itself hotly contested. See, for example, M. Brown, ‘After 30 years, a new take on Sid, Nancy and a punk rock mystery’, The Guardian, 19 January 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jan/20/sidvicious-film. [Accessed on 15 September 2017]. Meanwhile, it seems legends give rise to more legends. The Chelsea hotel, where Nancy’s death occurred, is now reputedly haunted by her ghost as well as that of Sid. See M. Montalvo, ‘Nancy’s Ghost?’, Love Kills, http:// sidandnancylovekills.blogspot.com/2012/10/nancys-ghost.html. [Accessed on 15 September 2017]. 51  K. Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter? Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture during the 1980s’, American Studies vol. 42 (2001) no. 1, 69–97, 70. 48 49

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Why do punks engage in such detestable behaviors? Villainous accounts explain that the outside matches the inside: punks are essentially empty and lack a moral compass. A typical observation states, ‘the researcher found no coherent ideology within the group. […] The members were into “doing their own thing”, which meant no restrictions’.52 More colorfully, we learn that punk has not ‘developed an articulate coherent philosophy at the self-conscious level’.53 They ‘embody total alienation from and rejection of conventional society’ since punks ‘lack the age, experience and education necessary to develop sophisticated systems of belief. Generally having only a limited vocabulary and command of language they tend to be inarticulate and unable […] to express and deal with their problems verbally’.54 We find nearly identical claims among moral crusaders against punk. Serena Dank, co-founder of ‘Parents of Punkers’, was a common media presence warning of the dangers punk posed. She cautioned that, ‘[w]ith hippies, the message was happiness, love, and peace. With punkers, it’s hopelessness and anger. It’s very destructive.’ She claimed: ‘The message of punk is, “I don’t care about me, I don’t care about you, we have a hopeless society, so what’s the point of going on?”’55 Again, punk has no guiding philosophy beyond hatred and the desire to destroy. Interestingly, similar diagnoses of punk are common even among some of the subculture’s proponents. A common trope portrays punks as the vanguard of the end of society.56 Legs McNeil, co-founder of the seminal punk magazine Punk, stated that ‘punk wasn’t about decay, punk was about the apocalypse. Punk was about annihilation. Nothing worked, so let’s get right to Armageddon.’57 Hebdige similarly claimed: ‘Apocalypse was in the air and the rhetoric of punk was drenched in apocalypse: in the stock imager of crisis and sudden change’.58 In sum, villainous legends portray punks as parasites. They do not produce anything of their own (at least nothing of value), but instead leach  Kennedy and Baron, ‘Routine Activities and a Subculture of Violence’, 97.  Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 929. 54  Ibid. 55  Staff, ‘L.A.  Group Helping Parents of Punkers’, The Spokane Chronicle (28 April 1982), 29. 56  Davies, ‘The Future of “No Future”’. 57  McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 318. 58  Hebdige, Subculture, 27. 52 53

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off of others’ hard work. When they consume others’ products, they do not even do so correctly (e.g. chains and safety pins as clothing), nor do they even pay for these goods with money earned through honest labor. Instead they beg, scavenge, steal, or mug. They actively harm themselves, and others, and offer no compensatory value. While punk may be caused by social problems, like economic distress, it is not a constructive response to these, but merely a symptom or secondary infection. After all, punks ‘presented themselves as the disease, not the cure’.59 Like all diseases, punk needs to be treated. Burr recommends giving punks jobs and further ‘suggests that it is necessary to also “treat” their subcultural beliefs and wean them off of these’.60 Punk ‘awareness’ groups, like Back in Control, went even further, recommending that parents confiscate their children’s records, posters, and punk clothing; take them to the barber for a normal cut; and warned that punk was like a cult ‘whose followers must be “deprogrammed” within a “heavily structured environment”’.61 In short, as the British liberal weekly New Statesman concluded: ‘Punks are singularly unsavory characters’.62

Punk Heroics Or are they? A competing legend portrays punks as heroes striving against social ills and crusaders for a better world. In comparing heroic accounts to villainous ones, vast differences are apparent. First, these stories rarely emphasize style except to proclaim its insignificance.63 Moreover, appearances can actually be deceiving. In a retrospective account, Andy Medhurst—a former punk and now Senior Lecturer in Media, Film & Cultural Studies—recalls an incident from his college days in the 1970s. He and his equally un-punk-looking roommate were scolded by an excessively punk-looking co-ed in their residence hall for playing loud music: 59  D. Hinton, ‘In These Times’ (18 January 1978), as quoted in Tillman, ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’, 172. 60  Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 937. 61  R.  Moore, Anarchy in the United States of America: Capitalism, Postmodernity, and Punk Subculture Since the 1970s (Dissertation) (San Diego 2000), 87. 62  M. Kidel, ‘Punk Shop’, The New Statesman, (17 December 1976), as quoted in Levine and Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols’, 422. 63  For example, C. O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk.

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Not just any loud music either – I was playing my tape of Never Mind the Bullocks […]. There we were, me (side-parting and flares) and my mate Steve (collar-length hair and rugby shirt) enjoying ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Bodies’, getting yelled at by a head-to-toe punk to turn down the Pistols. […] [H]ere, gift-wrapped with ribbons of irony, was proof […] that dressing up in a subculture’s trappings can be the most superficial of engagements with its deeper possibilities of meaning.64

Ironically, ‘looking’ like a punk might indicate that someone is actually anything but. Punk has transcended style or ‘performance’ and has moved on to ‘practice’.65 They have more important things to do. Thus, the behaviors that heroic accounts report also diverge from villainous legends, but first we must examine what motivates this activity. These texts are replete with lists of punk values. We read that ‘punks idealize freedom, autonomy, and diversity’,66 or ‘individualism, community, egalitarianism, antiauthoritarianism, and a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic’.67 O’Hara’s Philosophy of Punk details beliefs at length, noting that punks question ‘mindless conformity and authority’, while believing in ‘women’s rights, racial equality, and gay rights’.68 This identifies many causes punks fight for, and longer lists are common. Ranaghan and Breese claim punk has ‘an ideology that encourages equal rights between men and women, fosters environmental well-being, values vegetarianism, and acts as proponents of animal rights’.69 Considerable space in heroic legends is dedicated to describing how punks pursue these noble goals. Some are pursued within the subculture itself. Among these, the way punks organize their show spaces is frequently cited, because here punk’s vision of an alternative society is enacted most intimately. Here, we find several practices intended to level hierarchies and promote something more democratic. Punks oppose age discrimination so, unlike conventional concert halls, their show spaces usually welcome 64  A. Medhurst, ‘What did I get? Punk, Memory, and Autobiography’ in Sabin, Punk Rock: So What?, 219–231, 224. 65  Clark, ‘The Death and Life of Punk’, 233. 66  D.  Clark, ‘The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine’, Ethnology vol. 43 (2004) no. 1, 19–31, 29. 67  J.S. Debies-Carl, Punk Rock and the Politics of Place: Building a Better Tomorrow (New York: Routledge 2014), 11. 68  O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, 27–8, 78. 69  Ranaghan and Breese, ‘Punks and Crusties’, 45.

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people regardless of how old they are.70 Compared to mainstream venues, punk shows provide a ‘more participatory performance style which blur[s] the boundaries between performers and audience members’,71 while the music itself traditionally emphasizes simple and accessible styles that anyone can play, thus ‘demystif[ying] artistic production’.72 Moreover, although it is not free from sexism, punk has ‘created unprecedented opportunities for the participation of young women’.73 Thus, within punk ‘women were no longer ornaments, but served as lead singers, drummers, bassists, and guitarists in punk bands’.74 Such ethical behaviors are not limited to the music venue, but become an integral part of all punk ventures, of which there are many. Indeed, heroic accounts stress that constant creative activity characterizes punk. Punks have ‘created culture by developing their own concrete institutional means of cultural production’,75 including objects and social organizations such as records, fanzines, art, bands, radio programs, comics, record labels, concert venues, distribution systems, and support networks. All are produced according to the ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) ethic. This ‘exhorts that instead of being consumers and spectators’ of others’ products,76 punks should produce their own goods and services, independent of greedy corporations or controlling government. Unlike conventional businesses, punk ventures, such as bands and record labels, are not motivated by profit, but by the desire to achieve something positive. ‘Lookout! Records’ was ‘founded on a profit-sharing basis between bands and the label’.77 Dischord Records ‘has typified the possibilities for the creation of an independent and locally focused cottage industry in the punk scene’.78 Working with artists they liked, not necessarily those with the greatest profit potential, they sold their records as cheaply as possible and reinvested profits into supporting additional bands and into progressive political causes.  Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’, 75.  Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 156. 72  Davies, ‘The Future of “No Future”’, 22. 73  Moore, Anarchy in the United States of America, 18. 74  Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 45. 75  Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’, 72. 76  R.  Moore, ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Listen to Corporate Rock: Punk as a Field of Cultural Production’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 36 (2007) no. 4, 438–474, 439. 77  J.C. Goshert, ‘“Punk” after the Pistols: American Music, Economics, and Politics in the 1980s and 1990s’, Popular Music and Society vol. 24 (2000) no. 1, 85–106, 91. 78  Ibid, 89. 70 71

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The latter point draws the political dimension of punk into attention. Many members insist punk is inherently political. Writing in the fanzine Maximumrocknroll, ‘Jim Filth’ claims the subculture ‘is a very effective and fun way to learn about politics [and] how to change things’.79 Some journalists made similar claims. Writing about the Sex Pistols in Melody Maker, Caroline Coon argued: ‘It was natural that if a group of deprived London street kids got together and formed a band it would be political. And that’s what happened.’80 Early punk is frequently associated with leftist organizations and events, like the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism.81 Later incarnations seem even more politically involved. Punk music commonly deals with significant social issues and albums contain information for how to get involved. In 1991, for example, former Dead Kennedy’s singer, Jello Biafra, released an album dealing with the Gulf War and US aggression in the Middle East entitled Die for Oil Sucker.82 Punks frequently engage in various protests. Mattson chronicles their involvement against nuclear proliferation and US meddling in Central America.83 Community activism is also frequently cited and some organizations have a distinctive punk identity like ‘Food Not Bombs’, which has been collecting, preparing, and giving away food to the homeless since 1980.84 Other groups, like Positive Force in Washington, D.C. and the Gilman Street Project are also commonly referenced as models of community-­based action.85 In summary, heroic legends tend to ‘see punk as an essentially progressive movement articulating egalitarian, community-based, broadly leftist politics’.86 Instead of an emphasis on fighting and violence, we see cooperation and mutual-support. Instead of nihilism and destruction, we see community-engagement, charity, and activism. Punks are not mindless consumers or roving barbarians. Rather, they are ethically motivated producers of cultural goods and social reformers trying to make the world a better place.  Quoted in O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, 18.   Quoted in Tillman, ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’, 167. 81  Leblanc, Pretty in Punk. 82  Goshert, ‘Punk after the Pistols’. 83  Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’. 84  Clark, ‘The Raw and the Rotten’. 85  Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’; Goshert, ‘Punk after the Pistols’. 86  M. Phillipov, ‘Haunted by the Spirit of ’77: Punk Studies and the Persistence of Politics’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Culture vol. 20 (2006) no. 3, 383–393, 386. It should be noted that Phillipov is herself critical of this perspective. 79 80

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Reading Punk Legends Each of the preceding descriptions of punk presents a very different view of its subject. Instead of attempting to separate fact from fiction, it can be illustrated that by treating these accounts as legends—regardless of their validity—we can learn a great deal about what punk means to people and about its cultural significance. As we will see, the punk legend cycle—like any legend cycle—begins whenever a claim is told as though it might be true.87 The legends about punk resonate with key social concerns and fascinate—or horrify—listeners. Despite their compelling nature, the meaning of such legends is far from self-evident. Listeners must interpret it and may debate these interpretations among themselves as they discuss what they have heard. For some, hearing and discussing the legend will not be enough. They will seek to act out the legend as though it were true and the way in which they do so will depend on their interpretation of that legend.88 This ostensive behavior, in turn, will at some point be observed by other people who may tell about what they have seen. The ensuing narratives are legends in their own right and telling them will reinitiate the cycle in its entirety. Stories about punk fascinate people when they hear them because, like all legends, they deal with core values and concerns. Levine and Stumpf identified punk as a ‘reflexive’ subculture because of its capacity to embody societal concerns.89 It is no coincidence that anti-punk crusaders identified it as a sort of ‘folk devil’ threatening their values.90 Citing its alleged connections to anarchism and Satanism, Darlyne Pettiniccio, founder of a parent-support group for out-of-control teens called ‘Back in Control Training Center’, (in)famously claimed punk was an assault ‘on everything we Americans hold dear’.91 Similarly punk in general, and the Sex Pistols in particular, ‘threatened “everything England stands for”: patriotism, class hierarchy, “common decency” and “good taste”’.92 Yet, a  Dégh, Legend and Belief.  Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’ 89  Levine and Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols’. 90  S.  Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (St. Albans, UK: Paladin, 1973). 91  Quoted in D.  McLellan, ‘Spikes and Studs: Tipping the Scales Against Heavy Metal, Punk’, The Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1985, http://articles.latimes.com/1985-02-21/ news/vw-803_1_punk (accessed: 8 August 2017). 92  Clark, ‘The Death and Life of Punk’, 226. 87 88

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progressively minded person might find cause for celebration in a movement that allegedly challenges, say, class hierarchy. Likewise, Fox claims that punks oppose ‘the conventional system […]: bureaucracies, power structures, and competition for scarce goods’ and so on.93 These claims give audiences a choice: whether to condemn or celebrate this opposition. Punk can be interpreted as threatening to cherished values or protective of similar values. This does not mean that punks actually are any of these things; simply that they are a canvass against which we project our concerns. The exact meaning of punk, and whether it should be condemned or celebrated, have been the source of consistent and heated arguments over the years. Indeed, the intensity with which punk has been debated for decades is itself indicative of the legend process at work.94 Intense discussion occurs partly because legends do not have fixed meanings. Some interpretations may be more likely given specific content and a legend-­ teller’s intentions, but ultimately the person who listens to (or reads) a legend does the interpreting.95 Consequently, people might understand the same legend differently, perhaps emphasizing different parts, and coming to different conclusions about its meaning. Likewise, many of the sources cited above are not easily classifiable as simply narratives of punks as villains or heroes. For example, despite the many disagreements regarding punk, a common theme across sources is that punk involves ‘rejection of conventional society [and] anti-establishment lifestyles and beliefs’.96 Does this mean that punk is a social problem to be combated or an attempt to combat social problems? This issue of interpretation helps explain why many accounts seem contradictory. Following interpretation and debate, some people hearing punks legends will subsequently engage in ostension. Again, this is the phenomenon whereby people act out legends, ‘showing’ the story rather than simply telling it.97 If someone exposed to punk legends is suitably fascinated by them, they may believe them and act accordingly. Legends themselves include blue-prints for how to behave.98 As we have seen, however, there are different versions of punk legends circulating and different  Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’, 353.  Dégh, Legend and Belief. 95  Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults. 96  Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’, 353. 97  Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’ 98  Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults. 93 94

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interpretations of their meaning. Consequently, we see a comparable range of ostensive responses inspired by different interpretations of the legends. Perhaps the most common ostensive response to punk legends is ‘opposition’. Convinced that punk constitutes a threat, people mobilize to combat it. They take on the role of ‘hero’ and cast punks as ‘villain’. Legends include directions for how to behave or implied directions by describing how previous heroes acted. As early as the Sex Pistols, moral panic over punk led to various efforts to combat its alleged threat. For example, it ‘stimulated labourers to hold work stoppages and refuse to handle their record company’s goods, and prompted local councils and university bodies to cancel their concerts’.99 Later, the Back in Control Training Center recounted various tales of parents who successfully ‘cured’ their children of punk, offering prescriptions like: ‘If the child won’t [give up punk] on his own, the parents have to go into the child’s bedroom and remove the posters, the albums and the clothes […]. Then they have to take him to the barber to get his hair cut, or the hairdresser to get the color changed.’100 As with other moral panics, parents, schools, and authorities became increasingly worried about the threat supposedly posed to their children. Action was prescribed, and taken, without evidence supporting credibility of either threat or solution. Among mental health institutions in southern California, 83% recommended that adolescents receive treatment based on displaying punk styles alone.101 When many people believe and behave as though something is true, it begins to look like evidence that their belief accurate.102 In this case, popular and visible reactions to the threat posed by punk, however erroneous, looked like evidence supporting the existence of a threat. Thus, these reactions served to reinvigorate and validate legend claims and incited further ostensive responses in the form of other attempts to combat the punk threat. Another basic response to hearing punk legends is ‘emulation’. Here, too, one can take the stories about punk seriously and enact them. Those who engage in emulation identify with punk instead of the institutions arrayed against it. Just as legends can provide guidelines for how to combat punk, so too can they offer ready guidelines for how to be punk.  Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 166.  McLellan, ‘Spikes’, no pagination. 101  J.L. Rosenbaum and L. Prinsky, ‘The Presumption of Influence: Recent Responses to Popular Music Subcultures’, Crime & Delinquency vol. 37 (1991) no. 4, 528–535. 102  R.B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice (New York: Pearson 2009). 99

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Detailed descriptions or representations of style not only inform the reader that this is important, but also exemplify how punks should dress. These sources also illustrate how a punk should behave. Again however, interpretation of the legends affects the nature of ostensive emulation. One can still act out the role of hero. Society’s institutions become villainous, corrupt, and the source of social problems. By becoming a punk, they align with heroic forces combating these evils. Conversely, one might identify with delinquent punk portrayals. As one writer opined in the Toronto Star: ‘Punk may have become a victim of its own success. The vision of a volatile, rebellious, youth attracts a number of disaffected teens, drawn to the prospect of anti-social violence and rampant drug use.’103 Rather than fighting the problem, such individuals become the problem. Ostension can also explain why some changes in punk occur over time, such as its visual appearance, characteristic behaviors, and so forth. Ostension is fundamentally about acting out cultural scripts. Individuals adopt a pre-existing social status—in this case, the status of ‘punk’—and attempt to act out the behavioral expectations they have learned are associated with it. In this case, the cultural script might be either a villainous or a heroic legend that has fascinated a listener sufficiently that they have internalized its message and wish to emulate it. However, it is easy to misinterpret a script or for the script itself to be in error. First, would-be punks may have actual punk role models in their lives. In trying to emulate them, they might misinterpret their source. A common claim is that British punks mistakenly assumed New York punk was violent.104 Mickey Leigh recounted such an incident when the Ramones met the Clash: ‘[S]tanding in the alley like a posse was the Clash. They were all wearing black leather jackets, and they were all trying to be real fucking tough and we were a little scared. […] It was an act. They were acting punk, because that’s how they figured bands in New York acted – tough.’105 Emulation can also occur in the absence of real role models. One can learn to be a punk without first-hand exposure. This is problematic, because what is being emulated is not a ‘true’ punk, not even a misinterpretation. More recent generations of youth read or hear about the punks of the now legendary past, listen to their music, and consume other folk representations of these cultural icons. Guided by a particular image or  Quoted in Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 58.  Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’. 105  Quoted in McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 287. 103 104

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legend of punk—adopting its alleged demeanor or style and internalizing its imagined identity  – they bring the legend to life through their own subsequent actions regardless of whether or not that image actually represents any flesh-and-blood punk that hitherto walked the earth. The legend made flesh, in turn, may give rise to its own subsequent representations and interpretations, thus perpetuating the cultural cycle for the next generation. For example, aware of interest in punk, corporations market the idea that to be a punk, one must dress like one. Then, they sell spiked-bracelets and hair-dye as means of participating in the subculture. These ‘things could easily be marketed by the same corporations this youth subculture of the 1980s rebelled against’.106 This marketing exerts an especially ­powerful influence over individuals who have no other substantial connection to punk, such as actual punk role models they are personally acquainted with. Rather than learning how to be punk from other punks, they learn it from the marketplace. Other examples of ostensive emulation transforming punk abound. Punk scenester James Stark bemoans how a once peaceful and progressive San Francisco punk scene quickly became macho and violent as new members swarmed into the subculture informed by media accounts of an allegedly violent UK scene.107 Interestingly, UK punk aggression was, itself, a mistaken emulation of New York. It is not only emulation of villainous characteristics that influence successive generations of punk though. Others have suggested that a range of characteristics were added to punk over the years that were misidentified as original. The same UK scene, for instance, may also have erroneously contributed politics.108

The Future of Punk (Research) Fascination and argument over punk has persisted for many years and will continue. Roger Sabin argued that ‘the problem with all this debate around punk is that history is being rewritten’.109 No doubt, this is true. However, rather than lament this situation, it is well-worth studying that rewriting process itself. Understanding the legend process that informs  Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’, 88.  J. Stark, Punk ’77: An Insider’s Look at the San Francisco Rock n’ Roll Scene, 1977 (Re/ Search Publications 2006). 108  Lentini,‘Punk’s Origins’. 109  Sabin, ‘Introduction’, 2. 106 107

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these revisions could go a long way toward explaining why there are so many different and conflicting opinions over what a subculture like punk is or was really like. That being said, the arguments put forward in this chapter do not necessarily invalidate or challenge existing perspectives or findings on subculture. They do, however, suggest new uses for prior work—however ‘outdated’ some may appear to be—and suggest possible trajectories for future inquiry. First, existing work can be given new life as data: as cultural artifacts that tell the researcher something about the cultural milieu in which they were written. Legends do not typically present accurate portrayals of the real world, but they do provide a window into the minds of the people who share them. Legends about strangers poisoning children’s Halloween candy were objectively false. However, the fact that these tales disseminated so widely and so quickly indicates that they touched on real fears and concerns. In this case, worries about rising crime rates, growing suspicion of strangers, and concerns that children were no longer safe.110 As we have seen, ethnographic accounts vary widely in terms of their portrayal of punk. This might be less indicative of real divergence in the subculture than in the perspectives of those studying it. Thus, analyzing and comparing these accounts will possibly tell us more about the ethnographer and their concerns or values than the target culture. Content analysis of these ethnographies could consequently reveal significant findings about these concerns. These might, in turn, vary across time periods, regions, or disciplinary background in interesting ways that say little about punk—or any other subculture—but much about those who study it. Theoretical arguments can be put to similar ends. For many decades there was a heated debate in the subcultural literature over the exact nature of subculture. Without having to resurrect these debates, we can infer from them the spirit of the times. For example, older Chicago School perspectives tended to pathologize subcultures, much as villainous accounts do to punk, suggesting a conservative narrator concerned about social change and deviation from tradition. More recent post-subcultures approaches, conversely, tended to deny subcultures even existed, reflecting a perspective inimical to modernist ideas of social boundaries and inflexible identities.111 These interpretations seem to reflect changes in scholarly thought over time—not necessarily changes in subculture. How much  Best and Horiuchi, ‘The Razor Blade in the Apple’.  J.S.  Debies-Carl, ‘Are the Kids Alright? A Critique and Agenda for Taking Youth Cultures Seriously’, Social Science Information vol. 55 (2013) no. 1, 110–133. 110 111

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more revealing might observations of this sort be when the divergence in interpretation varies not just over time but, as in the case of punk, across narrators during the same time period as well? Such divergence might reveal important social cleavages. In punk’s case, the simultaneous existence of both villainous and heroic accounts seems to indicate significant divisions in public opinion over the role of youth, the importance of tradition, and the general state of society. Of course, we are not limited by the works of the past. New research can be conducted with the explicit goal of understanding the folkloric process at work. For instance, interviews can be conducted with punks, or other subculturalists, to understand how they learned about the subculture and what it means to be a member. The goal of such inquiry would not be to describe the culture itself, as prior work was intended to do, but to learn about the process through which claims about it are disseminated. Fieldwork can be similarly applied to see how these ideas are ostensively enacted in subcultural spaces. To what extent, for example, are punks acting out legendary scripts they have learned versus innovating new ways of being punk? The past may be rewritten, but analyzing punk as it is enacted now can also reveal how ostension is constantly rewriting the future. In other words, the future of punk or of any subculture can be tentatively predicted from the current ways in which it is acted out. In fact, the tendency for legends to become self-fulfilling—no matter how fallacious they may have been initially—is one of their most fascinating characteristics. Thus, while legends of doctored Halloween candy began as false but compelling claims, soon enough some people began to act them out in earnest through ostension. At least one man was inspired to poison his own son’s candy by these legends,112 while many children have contaminated their own candy with pins or similar objects in apparent hoax imitations.113 Today, despite the nearly non-existent threat, precautions against the persistent legend have become an annual tradition. In a similar way, legends about punk—whether told or enacted—influence future action. These messages, of course, need not necessarily represent any historical reality and more than fears of Halloween candy. Rather, these modern interpretations serve as role models for the next generation of subculturalists, s­ erving as examples that inform them of what the subculture is ‘really’ about and what it means to be a member. In the process, they change the character of the subculture. The legend becomes fact.  Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’  Ellis, ‘“Safe” Spooks.’

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Crucially, there remain important comparisons to be made across the stories people tell about subcultures like punk and the context in which these are told. These include comparisons of: (1) how punk is portrayed across nations or across regions within the same nation, (2) how portrayals of punk vary within the same place over time, (3) how different types of texts portray punk within the same time and place (e.g. television versus books versus oral histories), and (4) how portrayals vary based on who is ‘doing’ the portraying (e.g. self-identified punks versus outsiders). Very little of this sort of work seems to have been hitherto conducted. What do these variations reveal about the sources that tell these legends or the contexts in which they occur? Once we understand how such accounts vary, we can take further steps toward understanding why they vary. To some extent, future research will itself be contributing to the punk legend cycle. All future publications, for example, will make claims and can be read as legend. In pursuing research suggestions, such as these, researchers should nonetheless be cautious that they mitigate some of the more problematic aspects of that inevitability. First, when we use secondary sources, we should remember that they might represent the concerns of the writer more than the nature of the subject. Second, when we are engaged in first-hand study, our own perceptions of the truth can be biased in the same way: by expectations and preconceptions. If we observe female punks wearing black leather, bondage gear, fishnets, corsets and similarly ‘provocative’ clothing, how do we interpret it? Is this confirmation of punk sexual delinquency or is it, as Leblanc alleges, an attempt ‘to discredit their effect as fetishistic, sexually titillating items’?114 Finally, even asking questions to punks themselves may not yield ‘accurate’ answers. We may only learn what inspired them to ostensively act out legends, an interpretation of a claim, and not what the symbols ‘really’ mean. All this is not to say that we cannot know the ‘truth’ of punk. Only that, while legends might obscure their object, they simultaneously unveil the historical attitudes and concerns of those who tell or act on them. Punk, fittingly, persists, but not as some extinct entity with fixed characteristics that can be viewed safely in stasis within a museum exhibit. Punk continues to be a moving target and the stuff of legend.

 Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 46.

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CHAPTER 5

‘Bad to the Bone’: The Myth and Mystique of the Motorcycle Gang Bill Osgerby

‘Hey Johnny, What’re You Rebelling Against?’: The Motorcycle Gang Mythology ‘Hey Johnny, what’re you rebelling against?’ asks a pretty small-town girl; an archetype of 1950s teen convention. ‘What’ve ya got?’ growls back Johnny Strabler, the surly, leather-jacketed leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club, played by an enigmatic Marlon Brando. The snatch of dialogue is pivotal to The Wild One (dir. László Benedek), the 1953 film that trailblazed the popular iconography of the renegade biker. Johnny’s defiance encapsulates the movie’s theme of fiery mavericks pitched against the forces of authority and convention—a trope that has become a defining ingredient in the image of the motorcycle gang. Standing as the antithesis to the mundane and the mainstream, the indomitable biker has come to embody a sense of dangerous but vibrantly exciting Otherness. More than simply a stock stereotype, the biker stands as a potent and  enduring cultural mythology. According to Roland Barthes,

B. Osgerby (*) London Metropolitan University, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_5

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‘mythologies’—or ‘myths’—are an overarching ‘metalanguage’ that organizes our perceptions by conveying cultural meanings above and beyond the surface level of representation. As the pioneering semiotician himself put it, a myth is not a particular object, but is ‘the way in which [an object] utters a message’.1 From this perspective, myths are vehicles for expounding and expressing ideas and feelings. They are evocative motifs that work to construct and connote emotions, meanings and concepts. And the biker abounds in ‘mythic’ qualities. These mythic attributes are partly indebted to the physical experiences of motorcycle riding—the sensation of speed, the cold rush of air and the white-knuckle freedom of the open road. Moreover, as cultural theorist Paul Willis explains, the motorcycle’s semiotic values derive not simply from these sensory thrills of speed and power but also from the sensation of commanding these expressive forces, so that the experience of the biker is ‘not one of submission to the motor-bike, but one of assertion which stresses the importance of control’.2 This sense of physical prowess, Willis argues, is what gives the motorcycle its distinctive overtones of strength and agency. The image of the motorcycle gang, however, evokes much more than this. To quote George Thorogood’s rock ‘n’ roll classic, the iconography of the motorcycle gang is ‘Bad to the Bone’. Brimming with the spirit of buccaneering rebellion, the image of the motorcycle gang exudes a sense of transgressive difference; it radiates a sense of danger, defiance and cultural dissent in extremis. These qualities epitomize the beguiling attraction of overtly rebellious subcultures. The buzzing combination of flagrant insolence and effortless cool crackles around them like an electric charge. They fascinate and enthrall through a symbolism that drips with the thrills and spills of heroic (and resolutely stylish) revolt. This is epitomized by the allure of the motorcycle gang, which stands as an instructive example of the way much of the mythic character and popular appeal of transgressive subcultures derives from their aura of brazen sedition. But the tumultuous history of the motorcycle gang also points to the decisive role of the media in shaping subcultural mythologies. Subcultures owe much of their form and definition to the representational power of the media. More than simply chronicling and popularizing subcultural groups, the media play a decisive role in forging a subculture’s identity and 1 2

 R. Barthes, Mythologies [A. Lavers, trans.] (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 117.  P. Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 16.

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its members’ sense of themselves. The mythology surrounding the biker is exemplary. The motorcycle gang’s ‘wild and wanton’ associations spring from a long history of media intervention. In America, especially, the media have been instrumental in shaping the biker’s public image. To a large part this has been a story of fearful condemnation; the media painting motorcycle gangs as rancorous and sadistic barbarians. But there has also been an edge of ambivalence to these representations. The disapproval and alarm has, paradoxically, invested the biker with a charismatic cachet and he has become an abiding motif of intrepid bravado; configured across popular culture as an audacious and exhilarating challenge to repressive orthodoxy. Moreover, the history of the motorcycle gang shows how subcultural groups are not passive dupes in the processes of their mythologization. Rather, many subcultural members have actively courted the limelight, basking in an illicit reputation that reinforces their self-­ perception as defiant rebels. And the history of the motorcycle gang is a preeminent example.

Havoc at Hollister: Genesis of a Motorcycle Myth In America, the motorcycle’s symbolic connotations have long been a site of cultural conflict. From the 1920s, John Alt argues, the bike was ‘the bohemian sanctuary of drifters, nomads, outcasts and hipsters who created a counter-culture around a relatively culturally-undefined transportation machine’.3 And, during the Depression, the motorcycle became associated with unemployed ‘gypsies’—lone drifters on weather-beaten bikes who wandered from town to town in search of work and were viewed with suspicion. Against this, however, respectable interest groups fought hard to foster a more reputable image. In 1924, industry representatives and biking enthusiasts established the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) to boost the status of motorcycling. Organizing and encouraging motorcycle clubs nationwide, by the 1930s the AMA encompassed over 300 affiliate groups. Often with stringent membership rules and strict dress codes, these clubs were thoroughly clean-cut, and promoted an image of motorcyclists as upstanding, public-­ spirited citizens. Groups that refused to join the AMA—or who the organization barred from membership—were scorned as ‘outlaw clubs’ and 3  J. Alt, ‘Popular Culture and Mass Consumption: The Motorcycle as Cultural Commodity’, Journal of Popular Culture vol. 15 (1982) no. 4, 129–141, 130.

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were strictly excluded from AMA-sanctioned events. Nevertheless, the ‘outlaws’ were largely regarded as a minor irritation until the mid-1940s. After the Second World War outlaw motorcycle clubs grew in both number and visibility, especially in the American West and South-West, where the warm climate and open highways provided an ideal riding environment.4 The outlaw ranks included a few wayward teenagers, but were mainly loose fraternities of war veterans searching for camaraderie and excitement as they struggled to adapt to civilian life. Most enjoyed tinkering with motorcycles and pushing the machines to their limits. But many were also restless and disillusioned, and picked up a reputation for unruly escapades. The outlaw groups always identified themselves as ‘clubs’ rather than ‘gangs’, but their belligerent attitude was often underscored by their choice of name. In Los Angeles, for example, the Boozefighters MC (Motorcycle Club) was established in 1946, while the Galloping Goose MC were a motley group of exservicemen who took their club name from a coloquial phrase denoting an insolently raised middle-finger. And a particularly active outlaw scene developed around San Bernardino (known as ‘Berdoo’ in biker parlance), a rundown industrial city east of LA. A few miles south of ‘Berdoo’, for instance, the small town of Bloomington was home to the Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington—or POBOBs—a motorcycle and hot rod club whose membership was largely drawn from Air Corps veterans. Along with their club names, outlaws’ motorcycles also exuded dissent. Dissatisfied with accessory-laden production bikes, riders stripped down their machines to essentials. Fenders were ‘bobbed’ (shortened or removed altogether) and unnecessary trappings—saddlebags, windshields, chrome trim, big headlights—were chopped away. The idea was to improve the motorcycle’s performance through reducing its weight, but ‘bobbing’ also became an expression of riders’ defiant individuality. 4  Chronicles of the early history of America’s outlaw motorcycle clubs exist in the autobiographies of Barger and Hayes. See: R. Barger, K. Zimmerman and K. Zimmerman, Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club (New York: HarperCollins, 2000) and B.  Hayes, The Original Wild Ones: Tales of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club (St. Paul, Minn.: Motorbooks International 2005). For journalistic accounts, see: P. Garson (and the editors of Easy Rider), Born to Be Wild: A History of the American Biker and Bikes, 1947–2002 (New York: Simon & Shuster 2014); D. Nichols, One Percenter: The Legend of the Outlaw Biker (St. Paul, Minn.: Motorbooks International 2007); T. Reynolds, Wild Ride: How Outlaw Motorcycle Myth Conquered America (New York: TV Books, 2000); H.  Thompson, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (New York: Random House, 1966); and B. Yates, Outlaw Machine: Harley Davidson and the Search for the American Soul (New York: Broadway Books, 2000.

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Abhorred by officialdom, outlaw clubs like the Boozefighters and the POBOBs were refused AMA membership and were barred from the organization’s events. It was a fractious relationship that culminated in 1947 at Hollister—a sleepy Californian town, ninety-five miles south of San Francisco. That year, Hollister was the site for a Fourth of July rally staged by the AMA. The event was meant to be a relaxed weekend of racing and fun, but what ensued became more infamous. The vast majority of the 4000 bikers that arrived camped peacefully on the edge of town. But a raucous group of perhaps 500 outlaw riders gate-crashed the party and kicked into an uproarious binge.5 Members of the Boozefighters and the POBOBs took the lead as Hollister’s main street became an impromptu drag-strip, and liquored-up riders entertained the throng with risky stunts. The local police struggled to maintain order, but peace was finally restored with the arrival of a forty-man squad from the California Highway Patrol. Armed with tear gas and riot gear, they corralled the bikers and, to preoccupy the crowd, a dance band was ordered onto a truck to play a few numbers. Enjoying what was left of the weekend, the bikers bopped their way through inches of broken glass—debris from bawdy bottle barrages— and on Monday morning, bleary-eyed, they gunned their bikes out of town. It was certainly a wild weekend. But the Hollister fracas was hardly apocalyptic. Arrests were mainly for misdemeanors—drunkenness and disorderly conduct—and, while forty people were treated in hospital, the only serious injuries were sustained by three bikers hurt during their drunken stunts.6 Indeed, the outlaws themselves did not see the episode as especially significant. According to Bill Hayes, the Boozefighters’ official historian, the minutes of the first club meeting held after the weekend simply record ‘a line of clatter’ about the rally, before talk swiftly moved on to a ‘big discussion on sprockets, handlebars etc.’7 In fact, the Hollister incident would probably have been quickly forgotten had it not been for San Francisco Chronicle photographer, Barney Peterson. Peterson had turned up in Hollister to snap some pictures of the rally. But the pressman arrived late and, having missed most of the bike action, tried to get a useable print by persuading a passing drunk to slump on the 5  More detailed sketches of the Hollister events can be found in: Reynolds, Wild Ride, 45–58 and Yates, Outlaw Machine, 11–23. 6  San Francisco Chronicle, 5 July 1947. 7  Cited in Hayes, The Original Wild Ones, 38–39.

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seat of a parked motorcycle.8 Strictly speaking, the photo was not faked; but it involved a hefty measure of license. The boozed-up biker was deliberately posed—slouched on the grungy bike (a ‘bobbed’ Harley Davidson EL), waving a beer bottle in each fist and resting his jack-booted foot above a heap of broken glass. Peterson’s own paper, however, chose not to run the shot. Instead, it was picked up nearly three weeks later by Life. Splashed across a whole page of America’s leading news magazine, Peterson’s photo was accompanied by a story in which a drunken spree by a few hundred bikers was magnified into a violent assault by an army of 4000: On the Fourth of July weekend, four thousand members of a motorcycle club roared into Hollister, California, for a three day convention. […] Racing their vehicles down the main streets and through traffic lights, they rammed into restaurants and bars, breaking furniture and mirrors […] police arrested many but could not restore order.9

After Life’s melodramatic coverage, the Hollister ‘invasion’ became headline news. Picked up by the national media, the story developed a life of its own. Peterson’s photo was endlessly recycled, and Hollister became fixed in the public mind as the town laid waste by a two-wheeled horde. Overblown and sensationalized, the story represents an archetypal example of moral panic.

Motorcycle Mayhem and Moral Panic The concept of moral panic has been applied to a wide variety of contexts.10 But it was originally popularized by British sociologist Stanley Cohen in his study, Folk Devils and Moral Panics.11 Cohen’s analysis focused on Britain’s scooter-riding, fashion-conscious mod subculture of the early 1960s and the ‘battles’ that flared with their leather-clad,  Reynolds, Wild Ride, 50–51; Yates, Outlaw Machine, 16–20.  Life, 21 July 1947, 31. 10  Thoroughgoing accounts of theories of moral panic are furnished in: C.  Critcher, J. Hughes, J. Petley and A. Rohloff (eds), Moral Panics in the Contemporary World (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) and C. Krinsky (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Moral Panics (Farnham: Routledge 2013). 11  S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1972). 8 9

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motorcycle-­ riding rivals, the rockers, at seaside resorts during 1964. Crucially, Cohen highlighted the dimensions of sensationalism endemic to media coverage of the disturbances. According to Cohen, the initial fracas at Clacton was small-scale, and received little attention from the local press. But, in the absence of other newsworthy material, national newspapers seized upon the relatively innocuous events and created headlines suggesting a wholesale breakdown of public order. Cohen termed this kind of overblown media alarm a ‘moral panic’—an episode of heightened anxiety out of all proportion to the actual threat posed by real or imagined deviant groups, or what Cohen termed ‘folk devils’. For Cohen, moreover, the overdramatic reports of ‘seaside invasions’ by mods and rockers were not a neutral ‘window’ on events, but were actually a crucial factor in their development. Mods and rockers, Cohen argued, began as fairly ill-defined youth styles but were given greater definition in the sensational news stories. And the two subcultures steadily polarized as youngsters throughout Britain began to identify themselves as members of either camp—mods or rockers. Furthermore, the press stories sensitized agencies of social control; and the police began cracking down on the slightest hint of ‘mods and rockers’ trouble. The media attention and exaggerated press reports, therefore, fanned the sparks of an initially trivial incident, creating a self-perpetuating ‘amplification spiral’ which steadily escalated the social significance of the events. Cohen dealt specifically with Britain’s mod/rocker phenomenon of the 1960s, but the terms of his analysis aptly fit the rise of America’s ‘motorcycle outlaws’. While 1947’s events in Hollister were undoubtedly rambunctious, they were subsequently magnified and sensationalized in a media-fuelled moral panic,  with the errant bikers presented as savage, snarling folk devils. Moreover, a steadily escalating ‘amplification spiral’ ensued as the press and police became sensitized to the ‘motorcycle menace’. Consequently, the following summer, tensions mounted as outlaw bikers showed up to a weekend rally in Riverside, sixty miles east of Los Angeles. Again, it was a lively spectacle, with impromptu drag races and ceaseless beer-guzzling. But, as before, events were grossly misrepresented in media reports of a ‘motorcycle raid’ by ‘mounted hoodlums, thousands strong’, which gave ‘Californians in peacetime the hair-raising experience of guerrilla warfare’.12 In press headlines, Riverside was portrayed as being  Los Angeles Times, 6 July 1948.

12

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‘taken over’ by 2000 bikers in ‘riots’ that left ‘One Dead, 54 Arrested’.13 What the stories omitted, however, was that the arrests were mainly for drunkenness, and most of those detained were local residents. Moreover, the ‘One Dead’ was the result of a car accident a hundred miles away. Indeed, the County’s Undersheriff was so irate at the misleading reports that he penned an open letter to the press, putting the facts straight and condemning ‘the nation-wide sensational publicity given to the 4th of July week-end in Riverside, California [which] was neither honest nor factual’.14 The lawman’s protest, however, went unheeded as the image of the rampaging motorcycle gang became fixed in the public mind. Cohen’s analysis neatly highlighted the media’s role in shaping social phenomena and escalating their impact. But it had less to say about the relation of these processes to their social and political context. And, in the case of the America’s ‘biker panic’, the broader historical milieu was important. Popular perceptions of post-war America as a land of confidence and cohesion obscure the way US society was actually shot through with conflict and contradiction. The global tensions of the Cold War and the surge of consumer culture, together with the emergence of civil rights activism and profound shifts in gender roles and generational relationships, bred apprehension and suspicion. In the political arena Joe McCarthy ruthlessly gunned for ‘reds under the bed’, but fears of crime also loomed large with particular alarm prompted by an apparent explosion of juvenile delinquency. As the historian James Gilbert demonstrates, however, rather than being a response to a genuine eruption of adolescent vice, the postwar ‘delinquency scare’ served as ‘a symbolic focus for wider anxieties in a period of rapid and disorienting change’, with the concerns about youth crime articulating ‘a vaguely formulated but gnawing sense of social disintegration’.15 And the ‘biker panic’ was spawned from the same climate of apprehension—the melodramatic stories of marauding motorcyclists serving as a symbolic focus for a much broader set of social and cultural anxieties. Amid this tide of outrage, the AMA strove to contest the biker scare stories and reputedly insisted that 99 percent of American motorcyclists were respectable, well-behaved citizens—and just 1 percent were troublemakers. It is a pronouncement that has become entrenched in biker  Cited in Hayes, The Original Wild Ones, 39–49.  The Undersheriff’s letter is reproduced in Hayes, The Original Wild Ones, 41–45. 15  J. Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 77. 13 14

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folklore, though motorcycling historians such as Tom Reynolds have struggled to find any concrete evidence it was ever actually made.16 Nevertheless, while the story is probably apocryphal, it was eagerly seized upon by the outlaw clubs who savored the ‘outsider’ status it bestowed. This appetite for rebuke is at odds with ‘classic’ models of moral panic which, as Sarah Thornton argues, generally configure ‘folk devils’ as the ‘innocent victims of negative stigmatisation’.17 Instead, in her study of dance music subcultures in 1980s Britain, Thornton shows how the opprobrium of a moral panic ‘baptizes transgression’, with folk devils often ‘relish[ing] the attention conferred by media condemnation’.18 Her argument neatly applies to the American ‘biker panic’. Responding to the scorn, defiant bikers began to proudly classify themselves as ‘outlaws’—wild, maverick and beyond the conformist pale—and, to this day, a ‘1%’ emblem is provocatively stitched to the jackets of self-identified ‘outlaw’ motorcycle clubs. Reveling in the media-fuelled mythology, then, the ‘folk devils’ have readily embraced their lawless reputation, lapping up the infamy.

Black Rebels on the Silver Screen Throughout the 1950s, the myth of rampaging bikers rumbled on. In 1951, for example, the theme featured in ‘Cyclists’ Raid’, a short story by Frank Rooney and published in the popular magazine, Harper’s. Influenced by the larger-than-life reports of Hollister, Rooney’s story depicts a rural town pillaged by an invading motorcycle gang (the Angeleno Motorcycle Club). Catching the eye of Hollywood producer, Stanley Kramer, it was Rooney’s story that provided the basis for The Wild One. Bankrolled by Columbia Pictures, a major Hollywood studio, Kramer hired László Benedek to direct the movie and signed up Marlon Brando to star. The film’s plot sees a bike gang—the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club—disrupt a respectable motorcycle rally and run amok through the local town. The Rebels’ baby-faced leader (Brando) has eyes for a wholesome belle, but things turn nasty when a rival gang—the Beetles, led by the menacing Chino (Lee Marvin)—roll into town. For an authentic edge, real-life bikers were recruited as movie extras, and snatches of their conversation were  Reynolds, Wild Ride, 118.  S.  Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (London: Polity Press, 1995), 136. 18  Ibid., 181. 16 17

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incorporated in the dialogue. Indeed, Brando’s terse riposte when asked what he’s rebelling against—‘What’ve ya got?’—was supposedly taken verbatim from an ornery biker.19 Kramer, an arch liberal, had originally conceived The Wild One as an indictment of the greed and hypocrisy of rampant capitalism, with an ending that saw the town’s merchants refuse to press charges against the bikers because of the dollars the gang had pumped into their coffers. But the angle was vetoed by industry censors and the film was reworked to focus on the romance between the local goodgirl and the gang leader.20 And, as the recalcitrant biker, Brando was a major hit. Rather than a pernicious villain, Brando’s character is configured as a captivating anti-hero and the promotional stills featuring the actor leaning easily over his powerful motorcycle—black leather jacket securely buckled, a riding cap pulled casually to one side—not only became a defining icon of rebellious cool but did much to shape the biker’s distinctive style. In appearance, The Wild One’s two motorcycle gangs are very different. Led by Chino (Marvin), the Beetles ride scruffy, ‘bobbed’ American Harley-Davidson and Indian motorcycles, and wear tatty denim and old army fatigues. As such, they were probably closer to the style of outlaw bikers of the day. In contrast, Johnny (Brando) and the Black Rebels ride then fashionable British bikes (Brando rides a Triumph Thunderbird 6T), and are togged up in snazzy leathers and bike boots. It has become the archetypal biker image, but the Black Rebels’ appearance was more of a stylized Hollywood ideal of what a motorcycle gang should look like. And, while the classic ‘biker’ jacket (with an angled front zipper and an overlapping ‘W’-shaped collar) had been introduced by firms like Schott and Langlitz during the 1940s, it was only after Brando sported one (a Schott ‘One Star’ Perfecto) that the style was popularized as the biker’s black, leather trademark. Just as media representations gave distinctive form to Stanley Cohen’s mods and rockers, therefore, The Wild One actively fed into the development of the subcultural lifestyle and lore it depicted. Indeed, enthused audiences often cheered on the silver screen outlaws, one Pennsylvanian biker recalling how ‘Right away, some of our guys wanted to imitate Brando, walking like he did and trying to act super-cool’.21  D. Spoto, Stanley Kramer: Film Maker (New York: Putnam, 1978), 159.  S.  Kramer, A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: A Life in Hollywood (London: Aurum 1997), 56. 21  Cited in M. Seate, Two Wheels on Two Reels: A History of Biker Movies (North Conway, N.H.: Whitehorse Press, 2000), 13. 19 20

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A ‘Strange and Terrible Saga’: The Rise of the Hells Angels By the end of the 1950s the ‘biker panic’ was dissipating. Amid the economic growth and social optimism that ushered in John F. Kennedy’s presidency, concerns about crime and disorder subsided; and motorcycle gangs seemed like old news. The lull, however, was short-lived. By the mid-1960s, race riots, countercultural radicalism and escalating opposition to the Vietnam War were generating a renewed wave of moral panics. And, once again, the specter of outlaw bikers crystallized America’s murkiest fears. This time one group, in particular, were reviled—the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (the club spell ‘Hells’ without an apostrophe) originated among the outlaw bikers of postwar California.22 The name itself has a long military pedigree—used, for example, by many American bomber crews during the war—and it was adopted during the 1940s by several outlaw motorcycle groups, including a Fontana faction of the POBOBs. The lead, however, was taken by a branch—or ‘chapter’— established in 1957  in the blue-collar city of Oakland, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. The club’s original leader, Don ‘Boots’ Reeves, soon drifted away, but he was succeeded by a tough, young warehouseman, Ralph ‘Sonny’ Barger. Under Barger’s aegis the Oakland Hells Angels grew in stature and organization and, by the early 1960s, had hammered out a system of bylaws, a chain of command and club insignia (or ‘colors’) of a winged death’s head. At the same time, outlaw riders began taking the aesthetics of dissent to new extremes; with long hair, Nazi motifs, greasy Levi’s and customized, ‘chopper’ motorcycles whose low-­ slung frames, ‘ape-hanger’ handlebars and raked front forks radiated transgression.23 The Hells Angels, however, were just one among an array of other motorcycle outlaw groups—for example, the Gypsy Jokers, the

22  For accounts of the Hells Angels’ early history, see: Barger, Zimmerman and Zimmerman, Hell’s Angel, 25–47; Lavigne (1996: 19–63); Reynolds, Wild Ride, 107–127; Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 59–69; G.  Wethern and V.  Colnett, A Wayward Angel (New York 1978). 42–62; and Yates, Outlaw Machine, 24–35. 23  The style adopted by outlaw motorcycle gangs during this period is extensively chronicled in the photographs of Jim ‘Flash1%er’ Miteff, many of which are collected in: B. Roberts, Portraits of American Bikers: Life in the 1960s. The Flash Collection (Birmingham, MI.: Flash Productions, 2008); and Ibid., Portraits of American Bikers: Inside looking Out. The Flash Collection II (Birmingham, MI.: Flash Productions 2010).

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Comancheros and Satan’s Slaves—until the club was plunged into a media spotlight. In 1964, following a biker party in the oceanside town of Monterey, several Hells Angels were arrested for the rape of two local teenagers. The charges were quickly dropped, but sensational newspaper headlines transformed the Angels into America’s public enemy number one.24 In response, California’s State Senator Fred Farr hurriedly announced a full investigation of outlaw motorcycle clubs, to be headed by the state’s newly appointed Attorney General—Thomas C. Lynch. Keen to make a splash, Lynch released his findings in March 1965. His report seemed to confirm all the lurid stories about motorcycle gangs. Lynch listed a catalogue of ‘hoodlum activities’—assaults, rapes, thefts, drug abuse—committed by outlaw bikers across California, and he singled out the Hells Angels as the worst of the bunch. In reality, however, the substance of Lynch’s allegations was balefully thin. Doggedly searching for salacious stories, the Attorney General had trawled through ten years’ worth of police files; but his report barely made it to seventeen pages. Moreover, most of the ‘hoodlum activities’ he documented amounted to little more than drunken punch-ups—few of which even resulted in arrests. And, in desperation, Lynch had resorted to paltry complaints about the Angels’ hygiene, surmising that ‘the most universal common denominator in identification of Hell’s Angels is their generally filthy condition […] these people, both club members, and their female associates, seem badly in need of a bath’.25 Nevertheless, despite the report’s skimpy evidence, the press eagerly seized upon its accusations and a series of features reproducing Lynch’s claims almost verbatim appeared in the New York Times (16 March 1965), the Los Angeles Times (16 March 1965), Time (26 March 1965) and Newsweek (29 March 1965). Cementing the Hells Angels’ villainous reputation, the reports demonized the bikers as dangerous degenerates, with Time’s profile of the Angels ruefully concluding that ‘[n]o act is too degrading for the pack’.26,27

24  Details of the Monterey events and the subsequent media outcry can be found in Reynolds, Wild Ride, 113–117; Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 11–19; and Yates, Outlaw Machine, 38–40. 25  T.C. Lynch, The Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Clubs (Sacramento 1965), 5. 26  Time, 26 March 1965, 23. 27  For closer discussion of media representations of the Hells Angels, see: R.  Fuglsang, ‘Framing the Motorcycle Outlaw’ in S. Resse, O. Gandy and A. Grant (eds.), Framing Public

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And, in classic moral panic style, the alarm became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sensitized by the press stories, police forces throughout the US began closely monitoring outlaw groups, and cracked down on any hint of trouble. Frictions culminated in June 1965 at Laconia in New Hampshire. The town was the site of one of the country’s longest running motorcycle rallies but, alarmed by the media frenzy, the local authorities geared-up for problems. And, watched for by expectant cops, disorder was duly spotted when revelers let off smoke bombs. The law moved in, and street battles ensued. Vehicles were overturned and set alight as the National Guard advanced with fixed bayonets and police fired into the crowd with shotguns and teargas grenades.28 Easy scapegoats, the Hells Angels were blamed for instigating the violence. The claims, however, were risible. Laconia was over 2000 miles from the Hells Angels’ home turf and few had made the trip. And, of the thirty-one people prosecuted after the disturbances, none were from California.29 But, even at the height of the moral panic, some commentators were aware of the press overkill. The outlaws’ biggest champion was the author Hunter Thompson. In 1965 Thompson was a struggling journalist and was approached by The Nation, a news magazine looking for an article on the Hells Angels. As part of his research, the writer spent several weeks hanging-out with the group and his finished piece was incisive. Thompson was candid that the Angels were no choirboys; but he slated the media hyperbole, arguing that ‘[t]he difference between the Hell’s Angels in the paper and the Hell’s Angels for real is enough to make a man wonder what newsprint is for’: I’m convinced the net result of the general howl and publicity has been to obscure and avoid the real issues by invoking a savage conspiracy of bogeymen and conning the public into thinking all will be ‘business as usual’ once this fearsome snake is scotched, as it surely will be by hard and ready minions of the Establishment.30

Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World (New York: Routledge 2001), 185–194. 28  M. Mok, ‘Come to the Riot, See Wiers Beach Burn’, Life, 2 July 1965, 88–9; New York Times, 20 June 1965. 29  Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 220–229. 30  H. Thompson, ‘Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders’, The Nation, 17 May 1965, 522–26, 522–523.

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Impressed with Thompson’s take on things, the Angels allowed him to spend nearly a year riding with their San Francisco chapter as he researched his 1966 bestseller, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. The book saw Thompson expand his earlier themes, delivering a perceptive critique of the media’s creation of bloodcurdling folk devils. The press, Thompson argued, had actively shaped the Hells Angels myth: ‘If the “Hell’s Angels Saga” proved any one thing’, he sardonically observed, ‘it was the awesome power of the New York press establishment. The Hell’s Angels as they exist today were virtually created by Time, Newsweek and the New York Times.’31 Yet, Thompson’s book itself fed into the furor by further boosting the Hells Angels’ mystique. Selling 40,000 copies on publication, it earned many positive reviews and established the writer’s reputation as a literary gunslinger. Thompson’s relationship with the Hells Angels, however, soured and the Angels—feeling the author had traded on their notoriety—meted out a beating.

‘A Bad Jolt on the Squares’: The Outlaws’ Allure Hunter Thompson, Sonny Barger recalls, was ‘a real weenie and a fucking coward’.32 Indeed, in his autobiography, the Hells Angels’ leader derides Thompson’s book as ‘junk’, arguing that many of the journalist’s anecdotes were cynically embroidered and contributed to the ‘stupid mythology’ surrounding the club.33 At the time, however, many Angels savored this mythology and delighted in courting outrage. ‘Showing some class’, as it was known, denoted a biker’s demonstration of panache through flagrant acts of daring, defiance or deviance—deeds that were calculated to flabbergast the ‘citizens’ (as outlaws dubbed the public). As Thompson observed in 1966: ‘There are very few Angels who won’t go far out of their way to lay a bad jolt on the squares—preferably to the extent of unbalancing their metabolism and causing them to shriek in their sleep for days afterwards’.34 Massed ranks of choppers, barreling down the highway, was a calculated tactic of ‘shock and awe’, while Nazi regalia was worn ‘to

 Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 35–36.  Barger, Zimmerman and Zimmerman, Hell’s Angel, 125. 33  Ibid., 127. 34  Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 118. 31 32

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show some class’ and ‘piss people off big time’.35 As Barger himself explained to a Los Angeles Times reporter: This stuff—iron crosses, the Nazi insignia, the German helmets—that’s to shock people. To let them know we’re individualists. To let ’em know we’re Angels.36

And, while the press and the public were appalled, the bikers’ penchant for laying ‘a bad jolt on the squares’ won them some admirers. Not least within the burgeoning hippy scene. Psychedelic emissaries Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg were especially drawn to the Angels’ wild reputation. Enamored with the bikers, Kesey invited them to his La Honda ranch, overlooking San Francisco, in August 1965. The partying raged for three days as outlaws and hippies chugged LSD and grooved-out under flashing strobe lights; and fellow guest Allen Ginsberg, himself infatuated with the bikers, drafted a poem in honor of the event—‘First Party at Ken Kesey’s With Hells Angels’.37 Others were also enthralled with the outlaws. ‘Classic’ models of moral panic present the media as relatively monolithic in their negative portrait of folk devils; but during the 1960s, responses to the Hells Angels were more nuanced. While the conservative press depicted bikers as a font of depravity, some, more marginal, sections of the media exploited the scaremongering to tantalize audiences with a taste of the thrilling and the taboo. For instance, as Tom Brinkman shows, from the mid-1960s a slew of lurid pulp magazines ‘put the images of outlaw motorcyclists in the

 Barger, Zimmerman and Zimmerman, Hell’s Angel, 38.  Cited in J. Hudson, The Sex and Savagery of Hell’s Angels and the One Percenters (San Diego: Greenleaf Classics, 1966), 147. 37  The poem can be found in: A. Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947–1997 (London: Penguin, 2009), 382. An account of Kesey’s association with the Hells Angels is provided in: T. Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York: Bantam, 1968). As Wood points out, however, there were always tensions between outlaw bikers and the counterculture. For example, many among Kesey’s entourage—the Merry Pranksters—were afraid of the Hells Angels and avoided La Honda if they knew the bikers would be there. And in October 1965 Sonny Barger led a dozen Hells Angels in an attack on a peace march fronted by Allen Ginsberg, hippy insurgent Jerry Rubin and beat poet Gary Snyder. Nevertheless, Ginsberg quickly patched things up with the Angels by serenading the bikers with Buddhist chants and telling a bemused Sonny Barger that he loved him. See: J. Wood, ‘Hell’s Angels and the Illusion of the Counterculture’, Journal of Popular Culture vol. 37 (2003), 336–351. 35 36

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forefront of popular culture and imagination’.38 In 1966, for example, The Real Story Behind the Hells Angels gave a sensationalized account of outlaw bikers that enticed readers with ‘An Intimate Photo Story of Their Every Act—From Smoking “Pot” to Love Making […]’. And, in a similar vein, a welter of pulp novels boiled down the newspaper headlines into exaggerated tales of motorcycle mayhem with titles like The Pack (Black, 1967), Cycle Fury (Car, 1967) and The Blood Circus (Fitzpatrick, 1968). But the moral panic was milked most methodically at the cinema, where small, independent studios cashed-in on the biker brouhaha by cranking out a stream of cheap, quickly made pictures geared to the young drive­in market. American International Pictures (AIP) were first off the mark with The Wild Angels (dir. Roger Corman, 1966). Trading on the media controversy, the picture was an action-packed saga of biker bedlam that starred Peter Fonda as an enigmatic gang leader and, for a bite of ‘reality’, featured the Hells Angels’ Venice chapter as extras. A major hit, the film cost only $350,000 but grossed $5 million in its opening month. Fonda subsequently took the biker movie tropes to a major studio, Columbia, and recycled them in the classic road movie, Easy Rider (dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969). But AIP quickly followed up its money-spinner with a posse of ‘chopper operas’ such as Devil’s Angels (dir. Danny Haller, 1967), The Glory Stompers (dir. Anthony Lanza, 1967) and The Born Losers (dir. Tom Laughlin, 1967). Other independent filmmakers also kicked into gear. William Grefe, for example, came up with The Wild Rebels (1967), Titus Moody released Hell’s Chosen Few (1968), K.  Gordon Murray offered Savages From Hell (1968) and US Films scored a box office hit with Hell’s Angels on Wheels (dir. Richard Rush, 1967)—the latter starring a young Jack Nicholson and featuring the Oakland Hells Angels as extras.39 The 1960s biker films are ambivalent in their treatment of the motorcycle gang mythology. Superficially, the bestial depravity of outlaw bikers is presented as chilling evidence of a society in a state of collapse. At the 38  T.  Brinkman, Bad Mags: The Strangest, Most Unusual, and Sleaziest Periodicals Ever Published! Vol. 1 (London: Headpress, 2008), 213. 39  For more on 1960s biker films, see: B. Osgerby, ‘Sleazy Riders; Exploitation, Otherness and Transgression in the 1960s Biker Movie’, Journal of Popular Film and Television vol. 31 (2003) no. 3, 98–108; M. Rubin, ‘Make Love Make War: Cultural Confusion and the Biker Film Cycle’, Film History vol. 6 (1994) no. 3, 355–381; Seate, Two Wheels on Two Reels; and J. Wooley and M. Price, The Big Book of Biker Flicks: 40 of the Best Motorcycle Movies of All Time (Tulsa, OK: Hawk 2005).

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same time, however, the movies glory in their anti-heroes’ violation of mainstream values; and their appetite for blood-and-thunder sensationalism won a keen following among young audiences looking for the vicarious thrills of full-throttle rebellion. As radical journalist Joan Didion recalls, during the late 1960s biker films ‘constituted a kind of underground folk literature for adolescents’ that ‘fabricated a myth to exactly express that audience’s every inchoate resentment, every yearning for the extreme exhilaration of death’.40 Or, as biker movie producer Joe Solomon explained more effusively, the genre was so successful because it consummately articulated teen fantasies of revolt: You take a motorcycle gang. They’re putting down cops, smoking grass, laughing at the law. […] They’re taking women by force! Carnage! Pillory! [sic.] They’ve got money, guns. Some guy on a bike grabs a girl and screws her. No consequences, no kids, riding free. […] Kids think, God! I’ve got a mother, a father, I’m living at home. God! If I could have that freedom […].41

Indeed, the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suggest that the late 1960s saw outlaw motorcycle gangs—and the Hells Angels in particular—cast a mesmeric spell over a section of America’s more recalcitrant youth. Released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the FBI’s documents dealing with the Hells Angels during the late 1960s contain a wealth of correspondence from concerned citizens voicing their worries about lawless motorcycle gangs. But they also include a large number of more enthusiastic letters from youngsters eagerly requesting pictures and information about the Hells Angels for use in their high-school and college projects.42 And one 1967 letter, from an exasperated father, pleads with the FBI for help with his wayward son:

 J. Didion, The White Album (London: Flamingo, 1993), 100.  Cited in: R.  Ebert, ‘Joe Solomon: The Last of the Schlockmeisters’ in C.  Flynn and T. McCarthy (eds.), Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System—An Anthology of Film Criticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975), 135–146, 144. 42  The hopeful students, however, would have been disappointed. Responses to their requests—ostensibly from J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s Director—dourly explained that the Bureau was unable to provide information on the Hell’s Angels. Instead, the Director proffered a selection of pamphlets dealing with FBI’s own work. The 1960s correspondence is made available online by the FBI at https://vault.fbi.gov/The%20Hells%20Angels. It is also collected in: Filiquarian Publishing, Hell’s Angels: The FBI Files (Minneapolis, Minn.: Filiquarian Publishing, 2007). 40 41

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Gentlemen: The infamous Hell’s Angels have been so well publicized by the press that my son, 17, has made idols of them. This creates undesirable situations in the family and reaches the extreme of strife and arguments. Could you please send me whatever release you have made about this group of feeble-­ minded males and females. I may then be able to make a better and stronger-­ based representation to my son to the effect that they stand for nothing but worthless aims.43

As British sociologist Jock Young astutely notes, therefore, ‘there is a blurred and transgressive line between folk devils and folk heroes, between the desired and the forbidden’.44 And, during the 1960s, the images of marauding motorcycle gangs clearly struck a chord with audiences who hankered for a life in the fast-lane. But, more than simply a stereotype of audacious devilry, the biker has exhibited unmistakably mythic qualities in the depth and longevity of his cultural resonance. This, to a large part, has been indebted to the way the image of the outlaw biker chimes with mythologies of the Western frontier that are central to American culture.

Asphalt Cowboys and the Myths of the American West Since the nineteenth century, the pioneering spirit of the Western frontier has been acclaimed as the crucible of the distinctively egalitarian, indomitable features of the American character. A classic version of the thesis was articulated by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. According to Turner, European settlers had abandoned their traditional mentalities and hierarchies as they pushed the American frontier westward. For Jackson, the challenge of taming the frontier wilderness demanded new values— individualism, resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and democracy—which, in turn, came to underlie the American national identity.45 Of course, this ‘frontier myth’ is replete with fallacies. Not only is it a glib elision of the heterogeneity of the frontier experience; it coldly erases the massacres of indigenous peoples and any claim they had to the ‘frontier’ territories.  FBI, archived letter, 1967.  J.  Young, ‘Moral Panics and the Transgressive Other’, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal vol. 7 (2011) no. 3, 245–258, 255. 45  An extended version of Turner’s original treatise was published as ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ in 1920. 43 44

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Nevertheless, the frontier myth has exercised weighty influence; the cultural historian Richard Slotkin aptly demonstrating how its symbols and metaphors have relentlessly flowed through American literature, art and political discourse. The precise formulation of the frontier myth, Slotkin argues, has varied between different historical contexts; but it is underpinned by a master narrative of ‘regeneration through violence’.46 This narrative posits a notion of history in which conflict, violence and the subjugation of nature and indigenous peoples are legitimated as inevitable forces that ensure the ‘progress’ of civilization. According to Slotkin, the theme has been habitually expressed in American cultural and political life, in episodes ranging from the military aggression of US foreign policy to Hollywood’s spate of vigilante movies during the 1980s.47 The resilience of the frontier myth, Slotkin contends, is partly due to its flexibility. The myth’s images and metaphors are inherently malleable, allowing it to be mobilized not only in affirmation of dominant power structures but also in their denunciation—idealized images of the American West often appearing, for example, in popular critiques of practices judged a threat to traditional values. But Slotkin argues that the frontier myth’s durability also stems from its tacit qualities. The myth, he contends, is conveyed not via explicit argument, but is embedded in allegory and symbolism. ‘Its language’, Slotkin explains, ‘is metaphorical and suggestive rather than logical or analytical [it is] offered in a form that disarms critical analysis by its appeal to the structures and traditions of storytelling and the clichés of historical memory’.48 Drawing on Barthes’ semiotic theories, Slotkin sees ‘mythic icons’ as central to this process of storytelling. Condensed symbols of the frontier myth, these icons are ‘a poetic construction of tremendous economy and compression and a mnemonic device capable of evoking a complex system of historical associations by a single image or phrase’.49 The ‘empty wilderness’ and ‘the frontier’, Slotkin suggests, are classic examples; along with more specific personalities and episodes such as ‘The Alamo’ or ‘Custer’s 46  R.  Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: the Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, Conn. 1973). 47  R. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Atheneum, 1992), 634–635. 48  Ibid., 6. 49  Ibid.

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Last Stand’. But it is, of course, the cowboy who represents the frontier’s mythic icon par excellence. Writing in 1952, Marshall Fishwick enshrined the cowboy as ‘America’s contribution to the world’s mythology’. The cowboy, Fishwick argued, was a reconfigured version of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘Natural Man’— the romantic symbol of unbridled freedom that captivated the eighteenth century. And, on America’s Great Plains, Fishwick wrote, the legend was triumphantly reborn as the cowboy. In ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody’s rodeo shows, Owen Wister and Zane Grey’s Western novels and a litany of cultural texts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the cowboy was popularized as the embodiment of ‘a freedom, individuality, and closeness to nature which for most of us has become a mere mirage’,50 and he became the incarnation of ‘personal guts, integrity and ingenuity’.51 As Slotkin notes, however, the cowboy mythology also boasts a rich vein of rebellion. This is personified in outlaws like Jesse James, whose train-robbing exploits were taken up by nineteenth-century dime novels and reconfigured into a ‘myth of resistance’, with James presented as a Robin Hood of the West—a quixotic hero who existed outside the law, but made a stand for freedom against the injustices of the powerful. In this way, Slotkin explains, the Western outlaw was romanticized and recreated in popular culture; steadily transformed into ‘a hero who resists the forces of order, but in a way that affirms the basic values of American society’.52 And in outlaw motorcycle gangs the cowboy myth found its modern-­ day progeny. The horse was swapped for two wheels, and the Great Plains gave way to the open road; but the symbolic continuity was unmistakable. The image of the biker gang renewed and recharged the persuasive power of the frontier’s legend and lore. Configured as ‘asphalt cowboys’, outlaw bikers reanimated the ideals of rugged individualism and raw adventure central to the mythology of the American West. The lineage was especially glaring in the flurry of 1960s biker movies. Like archetypal Westerns, biker films were invariably set in the deserts of the American Southwest, while some biker plots were even lifted from classic Westerns. Hell’s Belles (dir. Maury Dexter, 1969), for example, borrows heavily from Winchester ’73 (1950); while Chrome and Hot Leather (dir. 50  M. Fishwick, ‘The Cowboy: America’s Contribution to the World’s Mythology’, Western Folklore vol. 11 (1952) no. 2, 77–92, 91. 51  Ibid., 92. 52  Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 154.

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Lee Frost, 1971) is indebted to The Magnificent Seven (dir. John Sturges, 1960). And for veteran biker movie director Roger Corman the links were very clear. In making The Wild Angels, the director recalled, he ‘saw the Hell’s Angel riding free as a modern-day cowboy. The chopper was his horse. The locales would be the wide-open spaces—the beach, the desert, and the mountains.’53 As Corman explained, he viewed the Hells Angel as akin to ‘the cowboy on his horse drifting through the West with no roots’: I think there’s something within the American Mystique that created the cowboy in the nineteenth century and the Hell’s Angel in the mid-twentieth century. And I think in both areas this mystique of the cowboy and the biker is composed partially of the truth of their lives and partially of the wishful thinking of other people who imposed their fantasies upon the life of the cowboy, so that the image that’s presented of both the Hell’s Angel and the cowboy is partially true and partially fantasy.54

The affinity between the mythologies of the American West and those of the biker was even more pronounced in Easy Rider. Its main characters’ names (Billy and Wyatt) are reminiscent of cowboy gunfighters, while Billy’s buckskin coat and Stetson are an obvious Western touch. And their odyssey across the vastness of the American landscape further invokes the pioneering spirit of the early settlers and the innumerable Western narratives that mythologize them. Indeed, Peter Fonda’s original concept for the film had been ‘a long journey to the East across John Ford’s America’ in a modern-day recreation of classic Westerns.55 The mythologies surrounding the motorcycle gang, therefore, demonstrate how subcultural myths do not stand in isolation. Instead, attention must always be given to the way that, as ‘mythic icons’, subcultures are inevitably woven into a wider cultural history and a deeper ‘metalanguage’ of connotation, metaphor and allusion. Beyond this, however, the history of the motorcycle gang also demonstrates how the spheres of subcultural ‘reality’ and subcultural ‘myth’ are not discrete and distinctly separate; but are mutually constitutive and intimately connected, continually interacting and informing one another. 53  R. Corman and J. Jerome, How I Made A Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (New York: Da Capo Press 1998), 133. 54  Cited in J. Mason, ‘The Making of The Wild Angels: An Interview With Roger Corman’, Journal of Popular Film vol. 5 (1976) no. 3–4, 263–272, 267. 55  P. Fonda, Don’t Tell Dad: A Memoir by Peter Fonda (New York: Pocket Books 1999), 241.

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Fact, Fiction and the Development of the Motorcycle Gang ‘Reality, legend and myth’, historian Philip Davies argues, ‘overlap in American history and society perhaps more than in any other western nation’.56 Pointing to the way fictional portrayals of the Wild West have become incorporated in the way ‘real’ events are recorded and understood, Davies contends that American history and its iconography are a rich synthesis in which reality and fiction have become virtually inseparable. And the motorcycle gang stands as a consummate example. The history of the motorcycle gang is not a story in which an ‘authentic’ subculture was seized upon by a predatory media and reconfigured as a sham distortion. Instead, the relation between the bikers and the media was always a fluid process in which it was impossible to draw a firm line separating subcultural ‘reality’ from media ‘mythology’. Indeed, media intercession was always pivotal to the developing image of outlaw motorcycle gangs. Media representations did not simply exploit a pre-existing subculture, but were fundamental to the subculture’s codification and dissemination. The stream of 1960s biker films, for instance, was crucial in the development of the motorcycle outlaws’ lifestyle and self-perception. As 1960s biker Barry Mayson explains in his autobiography: It was mostly a lot of noise and fun at first, the biking life. All of us had been influenced by the movies or news media accounts of Hell’s Angels or other big bike clubs. So they provided the model we tried to act out. We’d storm into a bar sometimes and start raising loud hell. We’d start fights anywhere at the drop of an eyebrow, ‘duke out’ bouncers, do wheelies in the middle of town and generally make as much commotion as we could everywhere we went.57

The media were also crucial in galvanizing the Hells Angels’ development. All the publicity and movie appearances conferred an ‘elite’ status on the club, and other outlaw groups clamored to affiliate. After 1966, the Hells Angels spread out from their native California as new charters were granted 56  J. Davies, ‘Representing and Imagining America’ in J. Davies (ed.), Representing and Imagining America (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996), 11–14, 11. 57  B. Mayson (with T. Marco), Fallen Angel: Hell’s Angel to Heaven’s Saint (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1985), 41.

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to chapters in Omaha and Massachusetts, and the first European charter was granted to a group in Switzerland.58 The media deals also demanded a greater degree of club structure and organization. Increasingly business savvy, the Angels enlisted the help of a Beverly Hills attorney and, in late 1966, officially registered themselves as the ‘Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, Inc.’ Even their death’s head insignia was carefully trademarked. The evolution of the motorcycle gang and its associated mythologies, then, is at odds with accounts which see subcultures as emerging ‘organically’ from a self-contained and self-sustaining ‘grass roots’. This was the kind of approach that underpinned much of the work associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) during the 1970s. Charting the history of British youth subcultures after the Second World War, the CCCS writers focused on what was seen as the creative ‘“moment” of originality in the formation of style’.59 From this perspective, involvement of the media and commercial business was equated with the ‘neutralization’ of a subcultural challenge—media intervention seen as returning once meaningful and ‘oppositional’ subcultures to the fold of the bland mainstream. Dick Hebdige was especially succinct, arguing that ‘processes of production, packaging and publicity [...] must inevitably lead to the defusion of the subculture’s subversive power’.60 But the motorcycle gang’s tumultuous history suggests that a large measure of the biker’s ‘subversive power’ has actually been indebted to the media. The symbolic connotations of threatening Otherness that surround the motorcycle gang spring from the succession of media-fuelled moral panics that, from the 1940s to the present day, have secured the mythology of the outlaw biker as America’s wildest and most wanton folk devil. Forged through processes of synergy and mutual interaction between outlaw bikers and the media, the mythology of the motorcycle gang is a neat illustration of Sarah Thornton’s argument that ‘subcultures […] do not germinate from a seed and grow by force of their own energy into mysterious “movements” only to be belatedly digested by the media’; instead, ‘media, and other cultural industries are there and effective right from the start’.61

 Barger, Zimmerman and Zimmerman, Hell’s Angel, 35; Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 77.  J.  Clarke and T.  Jefferson, ‘Working Class Youth Cultures’ in G.  Mungham and G. Pearson (eds.), Working Class Youth Culture (London: Routledge, 1976), 138–158, 148. 60  D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge 1979), 95. 61  Thornton, Club Cultures, 117. 58 59

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The history of the outlaw biker, moreover, demonstrates how subcultural groups are often complicit in these processes of mythologization. Rather than being passive fall-guys, many outlaws have clearly played-up to their notoriety—a relish for stigmatization that epitomizes Thornton’s argument that, for many subcultural groups, a derogatory response from the media ‘is not the verdict but the ethics of their resistance’, and that ‘although negative reporting is disparaged, it is subject to anticipation, even aspiration’.62

Eternal Bad Boys: The Motorcycle Gang Mythology Endures For the Hells Angels, the derogatory media responses continued throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. Events in 1969 further compounded their infamy. Hired as stewards for a Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in northern California, the Angels proceeded to intimidate and beat both the audience and performers, stabbing to death black spectator Meredith Hunter in front of the stage as Mick Jagger sang a nervous version of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.63 The Angels were never far from the headlines, and their profile marked them out as an obvious target at a time when the ‘law and order’ bandwagon of ‘Nixonland’—as historian Rick Perlstein terms it—was getting in full swing.64 An ardent right-winger, Richard Nixon had been elected President in 1968 promising a tough stand on law and order. Nixon’s campaign played upon the pervasive sense that America was coming apart, peddling a political rhetoric that, Michael Flamm argues, ‘enabled many white Americans to make sense of a chaotic world filled with street crime, urban riots, and campus demonstrations’.65 It was a worldview into which the ‘menace’ of the motorcycle gang fitted neatly, and the Hells Angels—as the most renowned—were systematically pursued.  Ibid., 135.  The Altamont debacle was vividly captured in the documentary film Gimme Shelter (dirs. Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 1970), while an extended account of events is offered in J. Selvin, Altamont: The Rolling Stones, The Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day (New York: Dey Street Books, 2016). 64  R.  Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008). 65  M. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 11. 62 63

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Determined for results, the authorities resorted to using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (or RICO) Act. Passed in 1970, the RICO legislation was originally intended to fight the Mafia, introducing heavy penalties for crimes committed as part of a criminal organization. But it was the Hells Angels who were one of the first RICO targets. A series of prosecutions during the late 1970s and early 1980s sought to convict Sonny Barger and other Angels of racketeering. The trials dragged on for months and cost millions. Most cases, however, foundered and the small number of convictions were soon overturned after the courts ruled that, while individual Hells Angels may have committed crimes, the club itself was not a criminal organization. It was a big victory for the bikers, who all along had argued they were victims of a police witch-hunt. The media uproar surrounding the Hells Angels has ensured they have become the most widely known outlaw motorcycle club in the world—to the extent that the term ‘Hells Angel’ is often used indiscriminately to describe any leather-jacketed ‘hoodlum’ on a bike. But the media circus surrounding the Angels has overshadowed the growth of other outlaw clubs. While the Hells Angels have dominated the American West Coast and parts of the South, the Outlaws MC has been predominant in the Midwest, the Bandidos MC have held sway over the Southwest, and the Pagans MC over the East Coast, while the Mongols MC have staked a claim to parts of Southern California. And, since the 1960s, the major US clubs have become international conglomerates, with hundreds of chapters launched worldwide, while many countries now boast extensive ‘home-grown’ outlaw clubs of their own—for example, the Rebels MC in Australia and the Night Wolves in Russia. With this expansion, however, rivalries have intensified, and since the 1970s bloody ‘biker wars’ have flared with murderous regularity; not only in the US but across every continent where the outlaw mythology has taken root. Moreover, across the world, police operations routinely round up motorcycle outlaws for crimes stretching from drug dealing and money laundering to kidnapping and murder.66 Indeed, the criminal associations of some bikers are fairly clear. But the more ‘mythological’ construction of motorcycle outlaws as nightmarish folk devils also endures in a succession of shrill moral panics. As criminologist Karen Katz argues:  A vast catalogue of texts purport to chart the criminal activities of outlaw motorcycle clubs. Many of these are salacious, journalistic ‘exposés’ which extend the biker gang mythology ever further. But a solid overview is provided by: T. Barker, Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime (Waltham, Mass.: Anderson Publishing, 2015). 66

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Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs have become a regular, omni-present scapegoat for politicians, law enforcement spokespersons, and political lobbyists to demonize when attempting to rationalize worrisome crime trends, to press for draconian legislation to address the perceived threat, to bid for additional government funds and resources, and/or to gain media and therefore public attention during election years.67

It is, though, exactly these ‘bad boy’ credentials that have endowed the motorcycle gang with its allure. And, as the quintessential ‘bad ass’, the impassive, leather and denim-clad biker continues to permeate popular culture—from films and TV series to advertisements, novels, magazine features, record covers and fashion lines. Indicative is the success of the US TV series Sons of Anarchy. The saga of a Californian outlaw motorcycle club premiered on the cable network FX in 2008 and its worldwide popularity ensured it ran for seven full-throttle seasons. And, while the series itself concluded in 2014, creator Kurt Sutter quickly announced plans for prequels and spin-offs; the show’s popularity demonstrating that there remains a mass of mileage in the mythology of the motorcycle gang.

67  K. Katz, ‘The Enemy Within: The Outlaw Motorcycle Moral Panic’, American Journal of Criminal Justice vol. 36 (2011), 231–249, 238.

CHAPTER 6

‘Two Baltimores’ and the Conflicting Representations of Baltimore’s Wild Out Wheelie Boyz Glen Wood

Two representations of Baltimore emerge from digital videos of a group of urban dirt-bike riders, the Wild Out Wheelie Boyz (WoWBoyz). The common representation of the WoWBoyz on YouTube is that of a peaceful crew of adolescent and adult men, who navigate Baltimore’s streets on allterrain vehicles and dirt-bikes. While one could view these acts as purely recreational, they actually allude to tensions between the primarily poor, African American population of East Baltimore and city officials—tensions which incur a long history. As the WoWBoyz challenge the local authorities’ rule by driving their dirt-bikes out of their neighborhood and into the city’s wealthier areas, law enforcement responds with extensive operations and measures aimed at defaming and suppressing them. The result is a cat-­ and-­mouse-game in which digital media plays a central role. The WoWBoyz produce media to showcase their maneuvers online in an effort to reach a local and global audience. Law enforcement, in turn, uses social media and other digital programs as surveillance tools. In the

G. Wood (*) York University, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_6

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process, two different cities appear. The US Department of Justice (DoJ)  poignantly refers to the ‘two Baltimores’: ‘[O]ne wealthy and largely white, the second impoverished and predominantly black’.1 This divide has been rendered through images surrounding the WoWBoyz and the city of Baltimore. The first representation is a city devoid entirely of dirt-bike riders, the second, a population suffering from urban blight and police repression. The WoWBoyz’s effective exploitation  of digital  and social media has generated international notoriety, which has cyclonically advanced the efforts of city officials to eliminate the scene and their images. As a result, a paradoxical dependency has emerged. The police must amplify, through aggrandizement, the scene’s devious reputation to legitimize their oppressive measures. The WoWBoyz respond by both celebrating and denouncing this characterization. Images of the WoWBoyz provoking law enforcement are uploaded online, and the authorities’ control of the city’s ‘brand’ is undermined. The Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) actions and the WoWBoyz’s responses  to them simultaneously strengthen the scene’s mythos and incentivize continued hostilities. I will build on Alan Blum’s  notion of scenes to  conceptualize Baltimore’s unique situation.2 I argue that while the WoWBoyz are often considered a gang—with all its connotations of structure and malevolence—it is analytically more fruitful to approach them as a scene. The distinction refers to a scene’s capacity to stimulate exchange and debate relative to political, social, and cultural issues. After introducing the WoWBoyz and their role in East Baltimore’s history, I will examine the group’s collective  practice of self-documentation  and the digital videos produced in that process, including the authorities’ reactionary measures. Although  the analysis that follows  interprets the WoWBoyz as a local phenomenon  in a global context, the interactions between  the WoWBoyz and city officials—as well as the central role of digital media in that process—may reveal more general practices of scene activism, uses of media, and the responses of authorities dealing with both. In doing so, this chapter reveals how mythified images of scenes can be negotiated and constructed by different actors.

1  The Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department (Washington: US Department of Justice, 2016), 5. 2  A.  Blum, The Imaginative Structure of the City (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).

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The WoWBoyz as a Scene Scenes are groups of local individuals who share an identity through collective interests. According to Blum, the majority of scenes are situated at fixed or semi-fixed locations, which incorporate regular activity: clubs, cafes, and bars, for example.3 But what if East Baltimore, a racially and financially insulated community, continually bereft of means to articulate its social ills, cultivates a scene that is more mobile than local and more visible than concealed? The WoWBoyz are an informal community network that challenge the local status quo through ‘exit’ and ‘voice’.4 Before starting their rides, the WoWBoyz tend to gather at Park Circle and Reisterstown Road at the border between East and West Baltimore.5 Members congregate, encircled by crowds, and perform stunts—an activity that allows literal escape from the dirt-bikers’ and audience’s symbolic, historical, and material surroundings. Invariably, the police intervene and break up the meeting, interventions which are recorded  and published on the Internet. The Baltimore Sun has repeatedly reported on the crowds watching the preliminary maneuvers before the mass of riders are confronted by police. From there, the WoWBoyz regularly travel from East Baltimore toward wealthier neighborhoods where they are documented by a mobile cameraman in a ‘trail car’ (a vehicle that provides gasoline to refuel/flee the area). The WoWBoyz’s media foregrounds extensive off-road riding in East Baltimore and throughout the city at large. A Baltimore Sun article referred to the scene’s relationship with law enforcement as a cat-and-mouse game, both waiting to ‘reclaim their territory’.6 After authorities reduced Reisterstown Road to one lane on  Ibid., 166.  As described in A.O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). 5  Interestingly, the WoWBoyz tend to gather at Reisterstown Road bordering Druid Hill Park, the same boundary between East and West Baltimore known to the arabber stables of the 1980s. See: D.  Rodricks, ‘On Baltimore Crime, Dirt Bikes, Arabbers, and Buses’, The Baltimore Sun, 10 August 2015, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/ bs-md-rodricks-0811-20150810-column.html [accessed on 3 April 2016]; and C. Campbell, ‘As Dirt Bikers Play Cat-and-Mouse Game with Baltimore Police, Officials Seek a Lasting Solution’, The Baltimore Sun, 25 August 2015, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-dirt-bikes-20150823-story.html [accessed on 3 April 2016]. 6  Campbell, ‘As Dirt Bikers Play’. 3 4

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Sundays in an attempt to curb rallies there, riders swapped weekend gatherings for ‘Wheel Deal Wednesdays’.7 The WoWBoyz’s actions continue to challenge local authorities’ control of the city’s ‘brand’, thereby making them an ever more pressing concern for Baltimore’s  elected officials. Although the scene’s participants act on a local level, anonymous virtual viewership gives rise to the scene’s increasing global visibility. When asked why riders record their escapades, M. Holden Warren, collaborator and administrator of the group’s YouTube pages, responded, ‘credibility’, verification one can rival with the top practitioners in the world.8 Indeed, Baltimore has built a reputation for being the world capital of dirt-bike riding. Carrie Wells, a former writer for The Baltimore Sun, agreed stating, ‘Baltimore is the birthplace of dirt-biking. People come from France, all over the country, and the world to learn from the dirt-bikers here.’9 In one video on the WoWBoyz’s YouTube page, an unknown rider from New York City claimed, ‘You ain’t anyone till you’re here.’10 Warren supports this view regarding the status of riders: ‘They have totally replaced the basketball player everyone looked up to. It just doesn’t seem realistic anymore, but now you can have ten thousand Instagram followers as a dirt-biker.’11 Inspired by the WoWBoyz, French film director Lola Quivoron titled a fictional film about dirt-bikes Dreaming of Baltimore (2016). A chance to escape the neighborhood is now synonymous with riding, and the end result relies on publicity.12 WoWBoyz member ‘Lil’ Chino’ may be the epitome of this dream; by maintaining a global following, he garnered a sponsorship deal and an indefinite relocation to Los Angeles.13

7  E. Ericson Jr. and B. Soderberg, ‘For What?: A Recent Crackdown on Illegal Dirt Bikes Leaves the Community Embattled, While Talk of a Legal Track Gains Momentum’, Baltimore City Paper, 27 October 2015, http://www.citypaper.com/news/features/bcp102715-feature-dirtbikes-20151027-story.html [accessed on 18 January 2017]. 8  M. H. Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 9  C. Wells, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 10  Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, ‘Wild Out Wheelie Boyz - Black Sundayz Baltimore # Baltimore BikeLife’, 1 June 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzem2WQurn8 [accessed on 16 January 2018]. 11  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 12  Ibid. 13  Ibid.

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Disenfranchisement and Repressive Policing The cat-and-mouse game between the WoWBoyz and the authorities is part of a larger debate on how to overcome East Baltimore’s poverty, high crime rates, displacement, and disenfranchisement. While authorities have historically tended to respond to these conditions with more policing, community leaders have emphasized the role of urban neglect as the decisive source of the neighborhood’s destitute state. East Baltimore has been an impoverished and neglected neighborhood as far back as the early twentieth century. Since the northward migrations of African Americans in the 1920s, East Baltimore’s Druid Hill Avenue serves as an invisible border separating both income and skin tones.14 An absence of community organizations weakened East Baltimore’s agency to lobby for the neighborhood’s affairs.15 The population felt further demoralized by periodic divestment and displacement resulting in the community’s  subjugation by corporations and  private/public partnerships.16 Already in 1976, Sherry Olson wrote, ‘It became obvious to everyone (it had always been obvious to the black community) that urban renewal meant black removal.’17 Compounding these problems, an extensive shortage of local government assistance contributed to a severe ‘distrust’ between both residents and city administrators.18 Community advocate Marisela B. Gomez summarized the residents’ sentiments in the late 1990s: [They were] tired of asking their city council representatives to advocate for changes in their community. They were tired of calling the police and waiting hours for a response […] They had grown tired of the disrespect with which the city and private services […] regarded their community and them.19

On top of poverty and neglect, the neighborhood suffers from considerable crime. According to The Baltimore Sun, East Baltimore retains one 14  M.E.  Hayward, Baltimore’s Alley Houses: Homes for Working People Since the 1780s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 237. 15  M.B.  Gomez, Race, Class, Power, and Organizing in East Baltimore: Rebuilding Abandoned Communities in America (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 24–25. 16  Ibid., 69. 17  S. Olson, Baltimore (Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing, 1976), 54. 18  J. Fenton and T. Prudente, ‘Chief Backs Cop Who Shot Boy, 14’, The Baltimore Sun, 29 April 2016, 1A. 19  Gomez, Race, Class, Power, 70.

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of the highest rates of gun-related deaths in the country. The violence has been attributed to gang and drug-related altercations, perceived taunts, mocking threats, and rumors of ‘snitching’ or informing authorities of neighbors’ crimes—instances that increasingly occur on social media. Many residents are reticent to share information about specific individuals because they are often members of their own community and, occasionally, their own family members. In contrast, some of  the most affluent neighborhoods listed zero deaths attributed to gun violence between 2010 and 2015.20 As of October 2016, approximately sixty-five percent of homicide cases in Baltimore ended with no arrests. Reverend D. Doreion Colter has claimed that when gunshots ring out in East Baltimore, residents figure the victim will be dead before ambulances arrive.21 A previous police commissioner strove to eradicate the violence by instituting a ‘zero-­ tolerance’ approach to minor offenses, believing it would abate felony crimes. Instead, it caused even greater tensions between the neighborhood and the police. The phrase ‘two Baltimores’ refers to a perceptual and measurable divide between predominantly white and predominantly minority neighborhoods. This is  evinced, among many other factors, by differences in policing standards. An independent study by the privately run West Baltimore Commission on Police Misconduct and the community-led advocacy organization No Boundaries Coalition  examined putative wrongdoing by Baltimore law enforcement from 2005 to 2015. Interviews collected from residents of opposing racial demographics indicated that white persons were more likely to receive assistance from emergency services and sustain an overall positive relationship with patrol officers. In areas like East Baltimore,  however, more than half of the respondents confided that they experienced anxiety or fear when interacting with the police.22 A fourteen-month investigation of the BPD by the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division revealed that street officers tended to ‘view themselves as controlling the city rather than as a part of the city’.23 In  J. George, ‘Neighborhood Violence’, The Baltimore Sun, 9 October 2016, 1A.  Ibid. 22  West Baltimore Commission on Police Misconduct and the No Boundaries Coalition, ‘Over-Policed, Yet Underserved: The People’s Findings Regarding Police Misconduct in West Baltimore’, 8 March 2016, 1–32, 18. http://www.noboundariescoalition.com/wp-content/ uploads/2016/03/No-Boundaries-Layout-Web-1.pdf [accessed on 25 January 2017]. 23  Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department, 157. 20 21

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fact, almost seventy-five percent of BPD police officers live outside of Baltimore City’s official boundaries.24 In other words, they do not share a personal stake in the welfare of the neighborhoods they serve. But proximity is only one part of the problem. Most commentators agree that tensions stem from aggressive legislation enacted nearly two decades ago. At the turn of the millennium, Baltimore homicides exceeded  three hundred per year, and as a reaction, Democratic candidate for mayor Martin O’Malley vowed to restore order. Once in office (1999–2007), he instructed the BPD to focus on quality of life arrests such as open-­container violations, trespassing, loitering, failing to obey, disturbing the peace, and so forth.25 O’Malley’s initiative produced ‘more than 100,000 arrests in a city of 636,000 [people]’ at its peak.26 While some welcomed the policy, critics cited litigation from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) regarding scores of illegal arrests—later settled out of court—as indicative of its failure.27 The succeeding Democratic mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-­ Blake, was of the latter group, repudiating the policy for begetting the fractured relationship between the BPD and African American communities.28 The DoJ’s inquiry showed that the zero-tolerance policy of the BPD led to a disproportional amount of unconstitutional stops in mostly African American neighborhoods. Arrests often lacked reasonable suspicion and infringed upon citizens’ constitutional rights.29 The DoJ found ‘reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing against African Americans’.30 Even so, it was Rawlings-Blake who devised new repressive measures with the aim of eradicating dirt-bike riding altogether. City authorities deemed the WoWBoyz a gang of illicit drug dealers and ‘gun-toting criminals’. One of the WoWBoyz, ‘WJZ Lor Dev’, was accused of selling illicit drugs at the same time as he was contacted by Honda Motor Company (a manufacturer of dirt-bikes and off-road vehicles)  Ibid., 16.  J.  Fritze, ‘Rawlings-Blake Criticism Highlights Debate over Police Strategy Under O’Malley’, The Baltimore Sun, 13 October 2014, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ maryland/politics/bs-md-police-omalley-politics-20141007-story.html [accessed on 25 January 2017]. 26  Ibid. 27  Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department, 17–18. 28  Fritze, ‘Rawlings-Blake Criticism Highlights Debate over Police Strategy’. 29  Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department, 5–6. 30  Ibid., 47. 24 25

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propositioning a sponsorship deal based on his online following. Tragically, he was murdered in a gun-related incident in Northeast Baltimore before an agreement was reached.31 Digital self-promotion is inherent to the WoWBoyz and the city of Baltimore’s public image, both locally and globally. Politicians look upon the scene as a branding nightmare, appealing to the wrong kind of tourists, bystanders, and online viewers by reinforcing what they consider a false narrative of harmless fun. Reflecting on the general attitude of authorities, Wells presumes, ‘[T]he dirt-bikers are a symbol of lawlessness in a city that’s trying to shake this image of high crime and poverty.’32 Riders push their otherness into visibility, thereby subverting their exclusion. Within the city proper, there is little documentation that dirt-bikers were deemed bothersome until they started to regularly cross Druid Hill Avenue into Baltimore’s wealthier neighborhoods. Readers of the Baltimore Sun tend to inculpate the scene, with one responding anecdotally that if his father were still a traffic cop, the dirt-bikers would be beaten into submission.33 Such threats of bodily harm are not daunting to the scene’s participants, as one of the riders states, ‘Of course we know it’s dangerous—but not as dangerous as our public schools and militarized police force.’34

Mobility and Protest in East Baltimore For decades, East Baltimore’s residents have responded to the neighborhood’s destitute state and intensified policing by riding. According to Warren, the history of the WoWBoyz can be traced to the late 1980s and early 1990s.35 Dirt-bike riding was initially a recreational distraction, but soon negotiating traffic did not provide enough thrills. Staging 31  D.  Watkins, ‘The Art of Street Riding: Dirt Bikes Are as Important to Baltimore’s Culture as Crabs and the Ripken Family’, The Baltimore Sun, 27 September 2015, 25A. 32  Wells, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 33  A. Thomas, ‘Don’t Glorify Dirt Bikers: A Lifelong Resident Says Illegal Dirt Bike Riders Are a Menace, Not Practitioners of an “Art Form”’, The Baltimore Sun, 3 October 2015, 17A; and M. Wilson, ‘Readers Respond’, The Baltimore Sun, 30 September 2015, 18A. 34  Watkins, ‘The Art of Street Riding’, 25A. 35  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. For archived video pages, see oneson450r, 25 March 2008, https://www.youtube.com/user/oneson450r/featured [accessed on 4 February 2016]; and Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, 1 June 2015, https://www.youtube. com/channel/UCEshK44o50sI7lJysi68_-Q/feed [accessed on 4 February 2016].

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increasingly complex stunts became the norm, and the inclination to document followed. Wheelies (aggressively throttling the engine and simultaneously leaning back on the rear end to cause the front tire to lift) differentiated novices from practitioners. Advanced riders were able to point their front tire to the sky or the twelve o’clock position on a clock. Locals later referred to the vast swath of riders as the ‘12 o’Clock Boys’, but soon separate factions surfaced. The WoWBoyz matured under the leadership of Steven Burden, known as ‘Steven Honda’, along with his brother ‘Honda Hoon’ and friend ‘Sconyroc’.36 The cohort grew and later attracted fellow riders ‘Charlie Boy’, WJZ Lor Dev, and Chino Braxton or Lil’ Chino, in addition to videographer ‘John R Bmore’.37 The authorities found the actions of the WoWBoyz so disturbing and threatening that by the end of the 1990s, they started introducing legislation to end riding altogether. In 2000, a mandate was introduced stating that any operation—without the proper permits—of all-terrain vehicles and dirt-bikes on the streets of Baltimore was illegal.38 Former mayor Catherine E. Pugh continued the ban of dirt-bikes within the city proper, excluding persons who secure their property in a locked area or with devices to prevent use. Without taking these precautions, ownership or guardianship, momentary or otherwise, is prohibited in the city of Baltimore.39 If the statutes appear so draconian that it is difficult to foresee their enforcement, consider this: in 2007 a seven-year-old boy was arrested—although never formally charged with a crime—for sitting on a dirt-bike that was not properly ‘immobilized’.40 Even more so, service stations and private citizens are not allowed to ‘sell, transfer, or dispense’ motor fuel intended for riding.41 Violation of any individual sanction carries a misdemeanor charge which incurs up to a thousand-dollar fine,

 Individual names are provided in full where previously published.  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 38  Campbell, ‘As Dirt Bikers Play’. 39  Baltimore City Department of Legislative Reference, Baltimore (BCDLR), inv.nr., Article 19, § Subtitle 40 Police Ordinances (As Last Amended by Ord. 16-593) 2016, 103. 40  Civil Rights Division, Investigation, 86–87. 41  BCDLR, inv.nr., Article 19, § Subtitle 40 Police Ordinances (As Last Amended by Ord. 16-593) 2016, 104. 36 37

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imprisonment for no longer than ninety days, or in occasional circumstances, both.42 The WoWBoyz and their sympathizers argue that incidents involving drugs and guns, which the authorities are keen to point out, have been overemphasized. Community members cite the  neighborhood’s  neglect and racist policing  practices as  the root of East Baltimore’s problems. Nonetheless,  Warren does not dispute the charge that some WoWBoyz affiliates are involved in illicit trades.43 So too, dirt-biker Dewayne Davis remarks that a very small number of riders provoke police officers and carry weapons. Davis contends that the animosity between law enforcement and the WoWBoyz stems from outright racism, the perception that all dirt-bikers are selling drugs or stealing bikes to afford the seemingly excessive purchase.44 At the time of the order outlawing off-road vehicles in 2000, the neighborhood was in a state of incomparable decline. Local community advocate Marisela B. Gomez recounts: [T]he community was primarily African American, low-income residents. Its social, economic, and health characteristics, among the worst in the city, included a majority of unoccupied houses, high rates of crime, drug dealing, high unemployment, overgrown vacant lots […] The community had been abandoned. It had been allowed to deteriorate to this level of blight (decay) with little or no systematic process to address the abandoned houses or the increasing crime and trash that come secondary to increasing abandonment and decreasing tax bases and public city services. This outcome had been decades in the making.45

The WoWBoyz’s actions can therefore be seen as a way of dealing with (or: escaping) East Baltimore’s destitute conditions. East Baltimore in the 1980s experienced an analogous crisis and also lacked the body politic that could articulate these ills and fight for 42  BCDLR, inv.nr., Article 19, § Subtitle 40 Police Ordinances (As Last Amended by Ord. 16-593) 2016, 108. 43  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 44  D. Rodricks, W. Wayne, and M.H. Warren, ‘Wheelie Wayne, Baltimore Dirt Bikes and the Highway to Nowhere (episode 155)’, 28 September 2016, in Roughly Speaking, produced by The Baltimore Sun, podcast, Mp3 audio, 00:36:15, http://www.baltimoresun. com/news/maryland/dan-rodricks-blog/bal-roughly-speaking-wheelie-wayne-story.html [accessed on 22 January 2018]. 45  Gomez, Race, Class, Power, 2–3.

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improvement. Participation in community organizations subsided due to itinerant renters and successive waves of decampment by homeowners.46 Those who remained sought alternative ventures to experience psychological and physical, albeit brief, departures. Photographer Robin Schwartz documented the activities of young and old men in the 1980s at the Retreat Street Stables located just across Druid Hill Park. The article and accompanying photograph collection tells of the neighborhood’s disrepair and the advent of a ‘men’s club of sorts’.47 Residents would appropriate horses used to pull street vendors’ (arabbers) carts and race in back alleys.48 The activity temporarily raised their status and empowered them in a city that stifled their autonomy. The 1980s horse-riding stunts eschewed visibility on the main roads, presumably to avoid punishment. Although this concealment limited the scope of awareness and possibility. In this respect, the WoWBoyz are different  because they publish their exploits online. The potential for those who choose publicity over secrecy is comparable to the methods in which community organizations wield power. Remarkably, according to Warren, some of the first dirt-bike riders in Baltimore were arabbers, and without coincidence, the WoWBoyz follow a similar premise: It’s about being seen […] It’s an illegal and active “fuck you” to the police. Baltimore is a “wild west” situation. It’s pretty lawless and it’s [riding] a representation of that, a cry for freedom.49

A similar fate affecting dirt-bikers today beset the arabbers of the past. Despite being considered part of Baltimore’s culture, Baltimore Sun writer Dan Rodricks noted that city officials ‘harassed’ the salesmen to near ‘extinction’.50 Albert O.  Hirschman asserted that disadvantaged communities, like East Baltimore, can choose between exit and voice as a form of protest. However,  the threat of residents leaving their community is unfeasible  Ibid., 69–70.  C.J.  Richter, ‘Amidst the Chaos of the 1980’s, the Boys of Baltimore Rode High: Retreat Street’, Fader no. 41 (October/November 2006), 140–147, 146. http://robinschwartz.net/FaderSchwartzArabbers.pdf [accessed on 17 February 2016]. 48  Ibid., 146. 49  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 50  Rodricks, ‘Wheelie Wayne…’, 00:26:42. 46 47

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when the community is beholden to the state.51 For East Baltimore’s citizens, there are few plausible scenarios for a lasting escape. As a result, Matthew Crenson presumes, ‘If residents cannot get away from an undesirable neighborhood, they may be able to make the neighborhood go away instead, by denying the existence of a distinct and identifiable residential aggregate to which they belong.’52 The actions of the WoWBoyz can be seen as a partial enactment of both exit and voice. Their rides are ephemeral escapes from their immediate neighborhood and their videos, implicit ‘cries for freedom’ on a global scale. Regardless, the authorities see their actions as an unacceptable challenge to the status quo.

The Media Politics of the WoWBoyz The WoWBoyz have not only gained notoriety in the physical city but also in the digital realm. Their videos engender a mythic omnipresence within Baltimore, suggesting that at any time a pack of fifteen to twenty riders may drive through one of Baltimore’s predominantly white  and more affluent neighborhoods. For nearly five minutes of ‘Sunday BikeLife’, WoWBoyz member John R Bmore pans left and right to capture dozens of intersecting riders maneuvering down a single avenue in West Baltimore.53 The suggestion of near-total control of a city street, with no apparent recourse from authorities, conveys the possibility it could happen anywhere. By posting their videos  to YouTube and social media, the WoWBoyz effectively rebuke city officials twice over, first in the initial physical act and then again in the digital domain. In the majority of videos, official and affiliated members of the WoWBoyz are allocated special attention in solo or two-person shots. The editing presents wheelies in medias res with bystanders transfixed on street corners and sidewalks. To those catching a glimpse in person it would be difficult to make out the rider’s identity. The same is true for the digital voyeur. This, then, breeds a level of anonymity that protects riders from arrest, while subsequently raising the mythical status of the riders’ online noms de plume. For example, at the conclusion of the video ‘A Day in the  Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, 55.  M.A. Crenson, Neighborhood Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 116. 53  Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, ‘Wild Out Wheelie Boyz - Sunday BikeLife – Baltimore’, 1 June 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1BntvJu57A [accessed on 3 January 2018]. 51 52

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Life of Chino’, Instagram monikers of the original members (Sconyroc, Honda Hoon, Steven Honda, and John R Bmore) are displayed with a prompt that encourages further viewing on other media platforms.54 The videos also suggest the WoWBoyz are part of a larger dirt-biking scene in Baltimore. ‘Hottest in the City Pt 2’ features original music by Honda Hoon that expresses unity among multiple dirt-bike crews. As a swarm of nearly twenty riders descends on a highway, the lyrics profess, ‘Eastside, Westside, Southside, we come through.’55 Identifiable areas in the WoWBoyz’s oeuvre include these neighborhoods—the most prominent being Druid Hill Park. Parallel editing links different riders and various parts of the city, forging an impression that each scene member is riding simultaneously across greater Baltimore. Compounding this suggestion is the recurrent use of editing transitions known as crossfades. Repeatedly, different riders’ wheelies are connected without breaks or inserts that would serve as pauses between independent motions. Thus, riding appears inexhaustible and everywhere. The practice of self-documentation by the WoWBoyz coheres around members symbolically playing cat-and-mouse games  with law enforcement by orchestrating semblances of conflict. For instance, sirens tend to appear as isolated inserts or are heard as ambient background noise.56 One recurring motif  depicts riders maneuvering wildly down Druid Hill Avenue, seemingly alone until the camera reveals they are surrounded by law enforcement.57 The most striking example shows a pack of close to twenty riders in front of a large gated building. The camera trains its focus on the barred windows, panning down to an exterior plaque that reads, ‘The Ferelene Bailey Infirmary’, an outpost of the Baltimore City Youth Detention Center and Maryland Correctional Complex. In the following shot, the  group idles in formation  in front of the Baltimore City Penitentiary, revving their engines in a synchronized din with one individual raising his fist to the sky. Finally, WJZ Lor Dev punctuates the irony

54  oneson450r, ‘WoWBoyz “A Day in the Life of Chino”’, 13 November 2012, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1C4A-D6p1M [accessed on 4 January 2018]. 55  Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, ‘Hottest in the City Pt 2’, 1 June 2015, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=UapIqBKYS80&feature=youtu.be [accessed on 15 January 2018]. 56  oneson450r, ‘Baltimore Allstarz Lost Tapes BMore Xtreme/Wildout Wheelie Boyz’, 31 October 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNnrCKi4-js [accessed on 13 January 2018]. 57  Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, ‘Wild Out Wheelie Boyz - Sunday BikeLife – Baltimore’.

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by wheelieing past the camera.58 It is implied that if the group were apprehended immediately, this would be the site of their imprisonment, though arrests are conspicuously absent from videos. The WoWBoyz’s videos indirectly operate as mediated forms of protest that publicize the city’s repressive policies. In one video titled, ‘WoWBoyz Fuck the City Up’, an unknown figure exclaims, ‘We here, and we ain’t going nowhere.’59 The riders’ open enthusiasm for spurning law enforcement and risking incarceration reflects the dire state of the East Baltimore community and its tense relationship with the authorities. Warren summarizes the WoWBoyz’s attitudes: ‘They have nothing to lose. They can get shot tomorrow, you can get shot on the corner. Riding a bike is nothing. You’re already out there, the police are already looking for you.’60 According to Warren, the scene stimulates a sense of pride and unity for residents, and the weekly rallies can be interpreted as a ‘fuck you parade’ directed towards city officials. Many of the WoWBoyz’s videos frame their actions as acts of defiance that invoke calls to arms: ‘Fuck the police. They know what it is. We’re gonna fuck them up.’61 At a rudimentary level, the scene’s imagery is a highlight reel of riding, stunts, and races.62 But the WoWBoyz’s media also endeavors to  capitalize on both  perceived and genuine conflict.

Eye in the Sky While the residents of East Baltimore await tangible improvements to policing practices, the development of measures to suppress dirt-bike riding continues. Traditional law enforcement tactics were replaced with novel approaches, in part, because riding remains a staple of East Baltimore and partly because police officers cannot engage in pursuing riders, as city policy deems this too risky.63 58  Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, ‘Wild Out Wheelie Boyz  – 1 Down 5 Up Bmore Edition #BikeLife’, 1 June 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3avMhns0sI [accessed on 17 January 2018]. 59  oneson450r, ‘WoWBoyz Fuck the City Up’, 17 April 2012, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=7Z9dG8kGOws [accessed on 3 January 2018]. 60  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 61  oneson450r, ‘Baltimore Allstarz’. 62  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 63  WBAL Newsradio 1090, ‘Baltimore Police Announce New Dirt Bike Tip Line’, 7 July 2016, http://www.wbal.com/article/175222/2/baltimore-police-announce-new-dirt-bike-

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In 2016, police investigators claimed that guns were recovered from weekly dirt-bike rallies as well as trail cars.64 Additionally, several accidents, including one involving an off-duty female detective who was physically assaulted after her car struck a dirt-biker’s companion, bred public derision.65 City authorities responded in July 2016 with the establishment of the BPD-led ‘Dirt-Bike Task Force’. Former police commissioner Kevin Davis  created the unit under the pretense that riders  were ‘gun-toting criminals who travel throughout the city recklessly, lawlessly and with impunity’. The BPD even asked for the public’s help by setting up a hotline, where ‘anyone with information can call or text a tip, photo and video’.66 Cases like these suggest to Warren that the city administration was concocting a ‘smear campaign’ in order to legitimize aggressive measures and turn residents against the dirt-bike scene. 67 The Dirt-Bike Task Force was entrusted with finding definitive proof of the scene’s violent tendencies and finally ridding the city of riders. With this goal in mind, dirt-bikes could be impounded without a warrant if an officer suspected that the handler violated any provisions of the aforementioned statute.68 In a few short weeks, the Task Force reportedly seized no less than one hundred off-road vehicles—but no more than five firearms.69 A clandestine surveillance program was developed in the effort to attain more tangible results. A third-party contractor, Geofeedia, was hired in 2016 by the BPD to monitor public social media accounts and posts, looking for wanted criminals and evidence of violence.70 In tandem with the city’s  network of  closed-circuit television cameras called CitiWatch, the software permitted access to federal and state databases. In addition to the use of a ‘stingray’ program, which helps define a cellphone’s location by connecting to other cellphones in the surrounding area, the BPD became capable of easily monitoring individuals or groups as they moved tip-line [accessed on 4 February 2017], 09:42. 64  Ibid. 65  J. Anderson, J. Fenton, and J. George, ‘Around the Region’, The Baltimore Sun, 27 June 2016, 3A. 66  WBAL Newsradio 1090, ‘Baltimore Police Announce New Dirt Bike Tip Line’. 67  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 68  BCDLR, inv.nr., Article 19, § Subtitle 40 Police Ordinances (As Last Amended by Ord. 16-593) 2016, 104. 69  D. Rodricks, ‘Wheelie Wayne Backs a Dirt Bike Park’, The Baltimore Sun, 14 August 2016, 3A. 70  A. Knezevich, ‘Police Monitor Social Media’, The Baltimore Sun, 6 September 2016, 1A.

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throughout the city. The WoWBoyz’s online presence made them ideal targets, and in proving the efficacy of digital policing programs, Baltimore law enforcement aimed to justify surveillance of the greater population.71 A riposte from the ACLU prompted Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to revoke Geofeedia’s access for violating their terms of service.72 The impression of impropriety fomented calls for an investigation and revealed that the BPD took deliberate pains to avoid detection. Geofeedia received an annual contract below the amount that would entail a review by the City Board of Estimates.73 The use of surveillance as a deterrent method is not unfamiliar to the WoWBoyz. Law enforcement employed a helicopter named ‘Foxtrot’ to hover above the city as officers nearby perused social media pages for leads. When the scene’s members heard the helicopter approaching, they would hide until the aircraft changed direction or had to refuel. The helicopter’s disadvantage was also its greatest force of deterrence, namely visibility. Because of this, the BPD soon switched to another form of aerial reconnaissance. Beginning in June 2016, over the course of four months, a Cessna airplane routinely disembarked from a small airport outside Baltimore. The plane logged the movements of any individual or vehicle within its cameras’ range of thirty square miles. Up to ten hours a day, software accumulated data and relayed images in real-time to a networked archive, all without public knowledge.74 Published by Bloomberg Businessweek, the story broke in August of 2016.75 The technology for the surveillance program was developed by Air Force Academy graduate and Iraq War veteran Ross McNutt  who 71  K. Rector and A. Knezevich, ‘Maryland’s Use of Facial Scans Decried’, The Baltimore Sun, 18 October 2016, 1A; https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/investigations/bs-md-sun-investigates-surveillance-cases-20160829-story.html. As of August 2016, the number of cameras is approximately seven hundred with an additional two hundred fifty managed by businesses and residences (H. Maleson [Co-Executive Producer], Square Off with Richard Sher. WMAR-TV [television broadcast; 28 August 2016], https://vimeo. com/180352151 [accessed on 4 February 2017]). 72  K. Rector and A. Knezevich, ‘Social Media Rescind Access to Data by Police Contractor’, The Baltimore Sun, 12 October 2016, 1A. 73  Knezevich, ‘Police Monitor Social Media’, 1A. 74   It is worth noting the DoJ’s investigation made no mention of this or other surveillance programs. 75  M.  Reel, ‘Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move from Above’, Bloomberg Businessweek, 23 August 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimoresecret-surveillance [accessed on 18 January 2017].

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approached the BPD with a plan. The department was initially uninterested, until it received a significant financial donation from John and Laura Arnold, distinguished philanthropists, who owed their fortune to the husband’s employment at Enron (he narrowly evaded the company’s collapse a year before it folded).76 Curiously, Baltimore administrators like former mayor Rawlings-Blake, the State’s Attorney, and Public Defender’s Office, along with other state and federal lawmakers, were not privy to the surveillance. A financial disclosure document was never brought before the City Board of Estimates—due to the Arnolds’ funding.77 After test flights in February of 2016, surveillance began in June and one of the plane’s first objectives was the dirt-bike scene.78 Days after the project began, the previously mentioned  assault of an off-duty female detective by a dirt-bike rider occurred. The plane was flying and the Task Force was watching. The BPD was able to successfully coordinate the alleged perpetrator’s route by connecting with CCTV cameras on the ground, resulting in the capture of the assailant and his vehicle.79 The arrest was celebrated until it became apparent the aerial recon was not reported in documents establishing probable cause.80 After the program’s disclosure, Rawlings-Blake avowed her tacit support calling the program ‘cutting-edge technology’.81 Even so, the project was abandoned. Despite all aforementioned measures, dirt-bike riding continues in East Baltimore.

Conflicting Images of the WoWBoyz Both the WoWBoyz and the authorities use digital media to create and act on their own image of dirt-bike riding. The WoWBoyz shift between two self-images, one that celebrates their subversive nature and one that  K. Rector, ‘Surveillance’, The Baltimore Sun, 23 October 2016, 4A.  K. Rector and I. Duncan, ‘Laws Eyed to Regulate Surveillance by Police’, The Baltimore Sun, 4 September 2016, 1A. 78  Reel, ‘Secret Cameras Record’. 79  Ibid. 80  K.  Rector, ‘Halt Demanded to City Air Surveillance’, The Baltimore Sun, 30 August 2016, 1A. The Sun also determined the plane may have recorded nine homicides and close to twenty-one shootings in the area it surveilled. See: K.  Rector, ‘Surveillance May Have Caught Homicides’, The Baltimore Sun, 9 October 2016, 4A. 81  K. Rector and L. Broadwater, ‘Aerial Video Raises Issues’, The Baltimore Sun, 25 August 2016, 1A. 76 77

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emphasizes their good relations with the neighborhood. The authorities portray the WoWBoyz as a gang and, in part, use the WoWBoyz’s own videos to strengthen these claims. The subversive self-image of the WoWBoyz is  typically celebrated in  their videos  with participants provoking and  evading the police. Notably, verbal threats do occur, but physical altercations are rarely presented. In one sequence, shots of a police car driving at night are inserted between riders maneuvering at dusk. Through this suture, the cruiser appears to be defying the no-pursue rule, and in the preceding clip Honda Hoon raps, ‘Middle fingers up. Tell that bitch to come get me.’82 The videos deliberately emphasize the antagonisms between the WoWBoyz and the police. The WoWBoyz consider residents of their own neighborhoods as allies, supposedly sharing a mutual distrust of the police. According to journalist Colin Campbell from the Baltimore Sun, community members of East Baltimore liken the riders to ‘athletes choosing a productive and entertaining alternative to the drugs and violence that plague the city’s streets’.83 By supporting them in public (congregating, waving, clapping, etc.) and contributing to their online following, residents effectively actuate the WoWBoyz’s agency as a voice of the community.84 To reinforce the scene’s claims, Warren points to an opinion poll in which a majority of respondents backed a proposition to create a new space or appropriate an existing structure to house the dirt-bike gatherings.85 Embracing the proposal, he  speculates, ‘It could be a potential turn around for these neighborhoods […] the death of these communities, [and] give people a reason to come and engage with them.’86 However, such a proposal is contradictory to the practice of disruption that defines the social formation. Wells infers that riders ‘thrive on doing something illegal, more appealing, more dangerous’  and  considers the biggest threat to public support for the WoWBoyz is collisions with pedestrians and drivers.87 Accidents perpetrated by or falls sustained from riding dirt-bikes do not exist in the  Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, ‘Hottest in the City Pt 2’.  Campbell, ‘As Dirt Bikers Play’. 84  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 85  ‘Baltimore Dirt Bike Park [Poll]’, The Baltimore Sun, 13 August 2015, http://www. baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-baltimore-dirt-bike-park-poll-20150813-htmlstory. html [accessed on 8 January 2018]. 86  Warren, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 87  Wells, in discussion with the author, January 2018. 82 83

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WoWBoyz’s productions. If we accept the media as a highlight reel, the rationale is understandable. However, accidents are inevitable with any physically dangerous activity. The omission of crashes is a premeditated decision to conserve open or latent support, either for the ridership or for a designated dirt-biking area. The BPD, in turn, discredits the scene’s members by labeling them gun possessing and drug dealing criminals. The Task Force eventually doubled down on its efforts, instituting what was known colloquially as a ‘crackdown’. As of June 2017, after one year of the initiative, forty-five riders were arrested and more than two hundred bikes seized.88 The BPD’s at times controversial actions are legitimized by emphasizing the WoWBoyz’s subversive nature. The underlying motivation for each group then corresponds to the overarching need for the Baltimore public’s approval.

Conclusion Media production  plays a central role in the debate between the WoWBoyz’s actions and the authorities’ responses to them. In the process, myths merge with historical facts. Taking this as a point of departure, it follows that neither should be considered sacrosanct by the researcher. In the case of the WoWBoyz, myths tend to fluctuate between two opposite poles that are interdependent. The BPD and the local government fear that videos of the WoWBoyz damage Baltimore’s conceptual ‘brand’ and reduce it to a lawless city. At the same time, they contribute to this image themselves by touting the lawlessness of the WoWBoyz’s exploits in order to garner support for repressive measures. The WoWBoyz, on the other hand, embrace their image as ‘folk devils’, while denouncing their vilification and the authorities’ reactionary tactics. By documenting their escapades, the WoWBoyz  elevate the myth of their grandiosity and incidentally expose their neighborhood’s plight to a global arena. Yet, these same media documents create leverage for both the WoWBoyz and civic authorities to perpetuate stereotypes and authenticate valid grievances, thereby  muddying the realities that overlap. The researcher is left to tease out these intentions and resolve what is shrouded or obscured by rhetoric. 88  C. Wells, ‘Baltimore Police Say Dirt Bike Crackdown Is Working’, The Baltimore Sun, 23 June 2017, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-dirtbike-task-force-20170623-story.html [accessed on 4 February 2018].

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E.H. Carr asks historians to consider their own biases resulting from contemporary cultural mores.89 One’s historical background colors the approach to the facts chosen. Research is an active social process, a series of evaluations that ‘speak only when the historian calls on them’. Writing entails selection, a compromise between the facts available and those made visible. One should consider videos used to buttress facts or steer debate as deliberate modes of creation. The historian must elucidate what is presented and carefully reflect on what is not; at times the latter is more important. The  practice of documentation and the media produced are both  pivotal to this study of scenes, each equally constitutes the myth as well as historical fact. Neither is beyond critique. We must balance the ostensible understanding of motivations and actions with the acceptance that the determining ends at play require a hierarchical ranking (‘the priority of causes’) in all their plurality. Ultimately, the external observer must weigh the sum of empirical evidence and interpretation. The two representations of the WoWBoyz revitalize the raison d’être of both the scene and the police. For the WoWBoyz, continuous riding, in spite of repression, reinforces their cause. In a similar mode,  the police legitimize their oppressive behavior through aggrandizement, which in turn further reinforces their need to control the WoWBoyz’s actions. Thus, the WoWBoyz and the BPD are inextricably linked. Their objectives are reliant on each other’s enmity and visibility. The scene and the city are symbiotic. Both are invested in the cultivation and reincarnation of the other—the actual and the imagined.

 E.H. Carr, What Is History? (New York: Vintage, 1961), 9.

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SECTION III

Subcultural Myth and Memory

How are subcultures and subcultural actors remembered? Whose memories take center stage in the public domain? And in the process of remembering, what is forgotten? Memory studies has long focused its attention on the ways in which groups remember past events. These shared memories are not fixed but change over time. Various actors and stakeholders assert themselves and claim space for their memory of past events. Cultural memory is thus negotiated and the result of changing power dynamics. In the process, certain things (re)gain prominence, while others are neglected or even forgotten. Subcultural memory, too, is often contested and in constant flux. The intricacies of these dynamics have however received little attention in past studies. The three following case studies elucidate how subcultural actors and other stakeholders try to influence the ways in which subcultures are remembered, and the dynamics that subsequently unfold. Yamil Avivi analyzes three documentary films about the 1990s New York club kids scene in order to assess how the murder of one of the club kids (Andre Melendez) by the scene’s leader (Michael Alig) is remembered. Through a close reading of the films, which were produced by people close to the club kids scene, Avivi argues that the topic of race is carefully sidestepped in relation to the murder in favor of a narrative of drug-­ induced excess. In the context of Alig’s attempts to make a comeback career, Avivi calls on researchers to be aware of the ways in which issues of race and gender in subcultures are constructed and remembered, and to remain critical of the narratives of subcultural actors.

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Ross Hagen, too, investigates how researchers are to deal with subcultural memories of excess. He focuses on the Norwegian black metal scene, which gained prominence in the 1990s because of series of arson attacks and even murder by scene participants. Although the black metal scene has lost its savage edge and become ‘an integral cog in the international metal music industry’, the scene’s image is still defined by its violent origin story. Hagen discusses how black metal musicians and fans relate to this origin story and sometimes tries to move beyond it, and also how the Norwegian cultural establishment and tourist industry have incorporated black metal into their repertoires. While the violent origin story is thus stripped of its ability to offend and affront, various actors embrace it to further their own goals, thus ensuring the story’s mythification and continued survival. Jeremy Prestholdt takes this perspective one step further when he investigates how subcultural actors, music fans and record industry executives challenged and changed the public image and memory of Bob Marley. Because Marley’s lyrics could be interpreted in various ways, there was ample room for both fans and the record label to project different meanings onto Marley’s musical heritage. In the 1970s, Marley was seen as the voice of Third World liberation. But by the 1990s, ‘fans and marketers simultaneously de-emphasized the militant edges of Marley’s message’, portraying him more as a transcendent mystic than a revolutionary. The three chapters thus highlight the various ways through which actors and groups try to influence and negotiate how subcultural histories are remembered. By advocating their own interpretations, they highlight certain aspects while downplaying others. The task of subcultural researchers in this context is not simply to assess which interpretation is true, but to be aware of dynamics at play, and to reconstruct how and why subcultural memory changes—and with what effects.

CHAPTER 7

Remembering Andre ‘Angel’ Melendez: Rave Subculture’s Contested/Conflicted Memory of a Racially Motivated Murder Yamil Avivi

Michael Alig, who left his hometown of South Bend Indiana as a gay misfit in the late 1980s, went to New York City (NYC) in search of acceptance and community. By the early 1990s, he became the ‘king of the club kids’ in NYC’s rave scene. Under Alig’s wing, the club kids were a group of chosen individuals who developed glamorized and commodified personas and guaranteed a profitable nightlife that helped expand impresario Peter Gatien’s ‘Clubland’, which consisted of four Manhattan nightclubs: Limelight, Tunnel, Club USA, and Palladium. In this role, Alig undisputedly empowered many misfit and disenfranchised queer club kid youths. He became famous with his signature party, ‘Disco 2000’, at the church-­ turned-­ nightclub known as ‘The Limelight’, which was run by Peter Gatien and his ‘Clubland’ enterprise. By furthering a creative queer nightclub subculture built on rave and hard drug use, Alig became an indispensable asset to ‘Clubland’. At the peak of his fame, however, Alig, along

Y. Avivi (*) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_7

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with his confidante Robert Riggs, brutally murdered the Colombian American and queer ‘low-brow’ club kid and drug dealer Angel Melendez. Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s ‘crackdown on drugs’, together with Angel’s gruesome murder, brought the New York City club kid subculture to a halt. Both Alig and Riggs were imprisoned in 1997, only to be released in 2014 and 2010, respectively. Ever since, Alig, rave fans, journalists, and film producers have struggled to make sense of the murder of Angel. In interviews, books, and documentary films, Alig describes the murder as a ‘freak accident’ induced by irresponsible drug use. He has expressed his willingness to resume his role as a nightlife public figure, but Angel’s murder remains a hurdle for his anticipated success.1 In Glory Daze (2015), the documentary that celebrates Alig’s release from prison, he articulates a tearful remorse, perhaps partly in order to sway disgruntled fans and on-­ the-­fence audiences to support his comeback. In the film, a number of former impresarios, confidants, and club kids express their full confidence—even while some express disgust and hesitation over Alig’s erratic behaviors and murder—that he is ready to return and contribute greatly to the nightlife or other creative industries given his past success. In this chapter, I ask what role racism played in Angel’s murder, given that the drug addiction narrative centers Alig’s drug consumption and does not sufficiently contemplate the racial overtones in the act. Longstanding colorblind narratives about NYC’s legendary club kid subculture can be found in film productions like Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1998), The Party Monster (2003), and Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015). For audiences not to consider head-on the unspoken racial overtones and even murder within the club kid culture is troubling at a moment when their ‘king’ is attempting to ‘reinvent’ his life out from prison.2 In this chapter, I argue that the 1  To name just three examples: (1) Alig has an official website (www.michaelalig.com) and a YouTube show called the PEE-EW with co-host Ernie Glam, https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UCaEtb-aE5pqGtJWvnf5H8tg [accessed on 13 June 2019]; (2) Alig has spoken about his place in the art scene here: Animal New York, ‘Living Murderabilia or Pop Art?: Michael Alig’s Seamless Transition Into the Gallery World’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=elDCI9KR9yY [accessed on 13 June 2019]; (3) Alig has spoken about ‘coming back’ to nightlife in an interview with Rolling Stone. See S. McCreesh, ‘Michael Alig Did His Time for Murder—Now He Wants to Party’, Rolling Stone, 28 January 2017, https://www. rollingstone.com/culture/features/michael-alig-party-monster-murderer-returns-to-nightlife-w463399 [accessed on 13 June 2019]. 2  R.  Fernandez (dir.) Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015), at 2:10:11–2:10:20.

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con­stant retelling of the club kid scene’s downturn in documentaries and scene publications has led to a whitewashed narrative of drug addiction that erases racial violence and exclusion and sustains a nostalgia for this 1990s subculture that awaits Michael Alig’s comeback.3 Further, I aim to reconstruct the intolerance within the scene that excluded Angel and other non-white ‘low-brow’ subjects from the privatized 1990s nightlife economy that thus privileged white(ned) queer subjects—a situation that should not be glamorized in the present. I do this by taking a critical cultural studies approach that involves a discourse (and visual) analysis of three films in order to reveal the (erasure of) racial overtones in a privatized scene that privileged white homonormativity and simplified Angel’s experience and existence in it. There is more to understand about Angel than the dominant narratives of club kid subculture have offered, especially regarding his experience of race, exclusion, and violence within the club scene. This chapter offers a counter-narrative by investigating the scene’s racism through Angel’s high-profile murder. Drawing on local sources, I offer here a version of Angel’s story shared by Latino queer men who knew him in high school and as a neighbor, which differs from versions told through the voices of mostly white(ned) club kids, promoters, and impresarios in the dominant narrative of NYC club kid subculture. As a former doctoral student studying working-class Latina/o youth in NYC nightlife culture of the 1990s in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I learned that Angel was not from Queens, New York, as media and film productions have indicated, but actually lived and went to high school in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where I was also born and partially schooled. Angel was a 1.5-generation Colombian American who immigrated to the US around the age of eight.4 A student at Elizabeth High School, New Jersey’s third largest high school at the time, he graduated in 1989. His defiant self-presentation in his Class of 1989 graduation picture shows his ‘hardcore punk edge’, with gelled and spiked long hair, while he slightly and deliberately slouched instead of sitting up straight. The picture is revealing of how my informants perceived him as a queer leader 3  Ibid., at 49:30 provides an example of a discussion about the club kid scene becoming ‘druggier, druggier, darker and darker’. Another example is the American Justice TV series episode Dancing, Drugs, and Murder (2000), at 11:00–12:39. Online at: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=zoIUTJMOQgQ [accessed on 13 June 2019]. 4  Dancing, Drugs, and Murder, at 12:35–12:50. A source from Elizabeth, New Jersey, and who went to high school with him told me he came to the US at the age of eight.

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among local Elizabeth youth struggling to come out. He encouraged other minority underclass students to come out during a time of great sexual repression and HIV/AIDS stigma amidst the town’s conservative mainstream and Latino first-generation immigrant community. After he graduated, underclassmen were aware of Angel’s ascendancy in the urban-queer-and-black-majority ball subculture of voguing and fictional family networks or “houses”5 and dance club scene. One informant, Danny Tiberius Ninja, who was a former Elizabeth High School student and a longtime member of the local ball scene, remembers: ‘And by the time I had graduated, he was already deep into the [metro New York City dance] club scene [that includes Elizabeth and Newark, New Jersey]. And when I got into the club scene, I was a statement and he was already a star. He was already growing high.’6 Ninja recollects (with admiration) that Angel became a reference for him as he climbed up the ball scene ladder among the houses. From a local perspective, Angel’s promoting and club kid status, whether chosen or not, was admirable to Elizabeth queer youth of color. In this chapter, I first offer a brief historicization of the films produced between 1998 and 2015 to illuminate the metanarrative that exists about Alig, the 1990s club kid scene, and the consistently simplified ways Angel is portrayed. The next two sections offer a more in-depth historical and ideological understanding of Alig’s rise in the club kid scene that shaped these films’ narratives. The second section examines the ways in which Alig’s ‘creative class’ innovation of the club kid subculture could easily be commodified in New York’s privatized nightlife economy and how, as a result, club kid subculture was whitewashed during the 1990s. The third section offers a historical narrative of the NYC techno/rave scene that ultimately gave rise to the club kid scene and one that is featured in the films produced between 1998 and 2015. I highlight how Alig’s rise contested US rave subculture as a straight and white scene to make it queer-­ affirming, but not truly inclusive of racial and ethnic minority subjects. These two sections together help us to understand that a film narrative created in the years 1998–2015 about Michael Alig has created what Patricia R. Schroeder, in her study of Bluesman Robert Johnson, calls a legendary ‘figure [in] the popular imagination’ or ‘a cultural icon of what we as 5  Marlon Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit (University of Michigan Press, 2013). Jennie Livingston (dir) Paris is Burning (1990) documentary. Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk, and Ryan Murphy (dir.) Pose (2018-9) television series. 6  Danny Tiberius Ninja was also known in the scene as Chastity.

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consumers value’.7 Schroeder says that these cultural icons are ‘myths’ that ‘lose something of their individuality and their historical specificity as we recycle their images, reflecting on what we think is important about them and thus important about ourselves’.8 The metanarrative created by all three films sustains and remembers Michael Alig as the myth behind a successful, queer-empowered, and lucrative club kid scene while forgetting the racial overtones of his legacy, including his murder of Angel Melendez. In effect, the film producers’ erasures of racial overtones of Michael Alig’s legacy maintain an ‘evanescent presence, drained of [Alig’s] own history as he comes to signify something about ours’.9 Essentially, the myth-making in these films is what Charles Ramirez Berg, in his ‘Manifest Myth-Making: Texas History in the Movies’, describes as an ‘entertaining, guilt-free narrative conformed to core American beliefs’ or a production of safe consumption that is reflective of an audience which values freedom, equality, and industry but avoids seriously contemplating the realities of racism in the US.10 In this case, Alig’s legacy revolves around queer freedom, equality, and industry in light of his lucrative queer-empowered nightlife club kid subculture. In the fourth section, I closely examine how this development has influenced the club kid narrative of Angel and explore what Angel’s own experience of being racially and culturally excluded might have been. After this, I show how Alig has revised his and other club kids’ relationships with Angel to retell and cleanse the story for the benefit of his comeback. In the last section, I discuss how researchers should approach emerging and existing subcultures in ways that center queer of color perspectives that are often left out of dominant neoliberal and whitewashed narratives.

Building a Dominant Metanarrative of Alig and the Club Kids: Films 1998–2015 The history of NYC’s club kid scene has been thoroughly televised in the films Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1998), The Party Monster (2003), and Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015). In all of these films, it is striking how they portray not only Angel’s racially motivated 7  P.R.  Schroeder, Robert Johnson: Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 2. 8  Ibid., 2, 13. 9  Ibid., 13. 10  C. Ramirez Berg, ‘Manifest Myth-Making: Texas History in the Movies’ in D. Bernardi (ed.), The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2008), 8–27, 3.

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murder inaccurately (as an accidental crime of hard drug use) but also his overall person. Angel is reduced to Alig’s dependable lowlife Latino drug dealer while Alig is mythologized as the star king of a financially successful and legendary club kid scene. In 1998, just roughly two years after Angel’s murder, Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1998), a low budget film released by Alig’s friends, Fenton Baily and Randy Barbato, catered foremost to former partygoers and a US queer mainstream audience that idolized the 1990s club kid scene. The Shockumentary is a reference point for subsequent movies that build on a sustained club kid scene film narrative. The movie features both an incarcerated Michael Alig paying time for his crime and a pre-­ incarcerated Alig during the heyday and downfall of the 1990s club kid scene. The directors interviewed both Michael Alig’s and Angel Melendez’s families about their lives. While the directors interviewed Alig’s mother and older brother in the beginning of the film, only Angel’s older brother was interviewed closer to the end of this documentary. In Angel’s case, details about his disappearance were highlighted rather than personal details about his upbringing, unlike with Alig. That is, the producers spent more time interviewing Alig’s family about his personal life outside the club kid scene that humanized him while they rendered Angel’s personal life marginal. Humanizing Angel would disrupt his portrayal as a lowlife drug dealer, which works well throughout this recurring film narrative. Yet, several of the club kids who are interviewed, in addition to Alig’s mother, raise Alig’s macabre tastes, like his famous blood feast party that— intimately foreshadowing Angel’s gruesome freak murder—came with escalating and rampant drug use. Overall, The Shockumentary glorified the drug-crazed club kid scene that peaked with Alig’s party Disco 2000 at the Limelight as recounted. Party Monster (2003), also produced by Fenton Baily and Randy Barbato, was a larger-scale production with well-known mainstream actors like Macaulay Culkin (playing Michael Alig), Wilson Cruz (playing Angel Melendez), and Seth Green (playing James St. James) that catered to a broader white(ned) mainstream audience. In the opening scene, the viewer is introduced to Michael Alig and his right-hand confidante, club kid James St. James, as the central figures of the story, while the ‘king’, high on Special K, confesses that he accidentally murdered Angel. Both club kids in the scene recount their childhood stories and early history of the club kid scene from their perspective. Essentially, the producers leave Angel’s perspective and story untold. His pronounced Latino and Colombian heritage

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in real life and close ties to the local queer-and-black-majority ball scene remain unmarked racial and ethnic identities in the movie, which works well for a mainstream consumerist white majority audience and ultimately avoids the racial overtones of Angel’s murder. Wilson Cruz, a US-born New  York Puerto Rican, plays Angel, a 1.5-­ generation Colombian American. Even while Cruz and Angel share significant intercultural experience and identity as Hispanophone brown-skinned Latino men, Cruz’s own mobility, mainstream sensibility, and US-born linguistic and cultural identity displace Angel’s local queer and brown Colombian immigrant identity from nearby Elizabeth, New Jersey, in a way that also whitewashes Angel’s social positioning. With the exception of a few scenes,11 this whitened Angel is not portrayed as an unfavorable or excluded club kid but as a confidante to Alig who supplies drugs to him. For example, when the club kids are interviewed on the Geraldo Rivera show, St. James dismissively asks Alig, ‘Who invited [Angel]?’ Alig responds, ‘I did,’ to which St. James responds, ‘Whatever for?’ Thus, the movie conceals Alig’s intolerance toward him and ultimately any racial motivation behind his murder. Rather, the producers sustain the notion of a murder prompted by irresponsible drug abuse. Glory Daze (2015), produced by Ramon Fernandez, harkens back to a documentary style like The Shockumentary (1998), but now in the moment when Alig has recently been released from jail and has served his time for Angel’s murder. Unlike the producers of the first two films, who were friends in the 1990s, Fernandez was not friends with Alig, although he enjoyed the club kid scene. Ironically, Fernandez shares Angel’s identity as a brown-skinned Latino but sustains Alig’s club kid scene dominant narrative. The film celebrates a free Alig and many of the original club kids who retell the heyday of the legendary club kid scene. While most of them denounce Alig’s behavior and act of murder, memories of the height of the scene and the hope that Alig will return to jumpstart today’s New York City nightlife are the centerpieces of this production. Fernandez portrays Alig as mostly remorseful, but with one uncensored moment of Alig and St. James joking light-heartedly about dumping Angel’s torso into the Hudson River. While the film does briefly touch upon Angel’s belonging to the New York City pier scene—a majority queer and black space of ball subculture—this is cast negatively. He is described as a ‘pier queen’, and

 F. Bailey and R. Barbato (dir.), Party Monster (2003), at 47:15–47:35.

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there is no attempt to unpack any meaningful understanding about the late Angel Melendez outside the club kid scene.

Investing in the King and His Chosen Club Kids Alig and the club kids gained stardom through their residency at the Limelight. Club kid Walt Paper has rightly stated that the 1990s club kids ‘brought people to New  York […] it was an industry’. In Glory Daze, ‘Chief’, a black security guard and the only black subject in the documentary, explains: ‘Alig was like an attraction. People came to see the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, they would come to see the club kids at Limelight.’ As club kids were all the rage, they were covered in newspapers and magazines and frequently invited to make televised appearances on talk shows.12 Their glamorous and outspoken nightlife celebrated a ‘homonormative’ queerness that was often advertised as being available for consumption at different Clubland parties. Club kids guaranteed profit in a privatized nightlife industry, but this did not mean that all queer kids were welcome. Instead, the club kids rage celebrated mobile and enfranchised, white(ned) gays or queers.13 It was these kids who were invested in and perceived as capital for industry and development. The role of gay and queer men in capitalist urban development has been theorized by Richard Florida, among others.14 Fiona Buckland has built on this in her research, suggesting that homonormative men are often intimately tied to furthering capitalism in the entertainment industry and nightclubs.15 Christina Hanhardt has reconstructed how, in the 12  For example, see appearances at the Phil Donahue show, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cY0V4O7ErJ0; at the Geraldo Rivera show, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=sajRVAAk3rY; and at the Joan Rivers show, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=GGT982vBiK8 [accessed on 13 June 2019]. 13  K Murphy, P.  Kevin and D.  Serlin (eds.), Queer Futures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); L. Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003); C.B.  Hanhardt, Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013); P.  Drucker, ‘Gay Normality and Queer Transformation’, Zapruder World vol. 2 (2015), http://www.zapruderworld.org/gay-normality-and-queer-transformation, [accessed on 16 September 2017]. 14  R.  Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 15  F.  Buckland, Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World Making (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 89.

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1970s, ‘gay white men were extolled for saving declining cities as vanguard members of the vaunted back-to-the-city movement’.16 She further writes that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, ‘gay populations were invoked as enticements for the creative class of workers to settle in, and thus revitalize, restructured regions’.17 Hanhardt’s description of these gay men and women as a ‘creative class’ is similar to notions of the glamorously homonormative club kid society that became profitable. Village Voice columnist Michael Musto perceived Alig and his club kids as part of this creative class, who were countering the ‘death of downtown’ New  York’s nightlife. William Bastone and Jennifer Gonnerman, too, claim that Michael Alig and his club kids ultimately ‘revitalized’ a downtown economy of nightlife and entertainment.18 That Alig was, at least in retrospect, aware of this is shown in the documentary film Party Monster. Before the producers turn to a 1993 TV commercial advertising Club USA’s opening, they write as a preface: ‘As the Club Kid Movement grew, Gatien launched Club USA with a huge publicity campaign’. Alig is subsequently quoted saying: ‘Club Kids were very current to the 80s of the packaging, press, publicity, corporation-y, out for yourself, money, you know what I mean, for nothing, it was very American […] give me money, because I’m fabulous ’cause I say so’.19 His argument links the club kids’ creative ingenuity with queering American values (‘It was very American’), by claiming that it is homonormative men like him who forge industry and profit (‘give me money, because I’m fabulous’) through their self-confidence (‘I’m fabulous ’cause I say so’) and their ability to be commodified (by the ‘press’ and ‘publicity’). Near the end of Glory Daze, Alig embraces the American values of ‘selling yourself’ and ‘creative prowess’. Michael Alig’s revival of downtown nightlife and lucrative success in the New  York nightlife industry occurred during a period that David Harvey calls the ‘neoliberalization of New York’.20 Harvey explains how politicians, investors, and developers promoted a neoliberalized culture that erased the collective memory of democracy ‘via artistic freedom and artistic license’ and a demand for lifestyle diversification that promoted an  Hanhardt, Safe Space, 8.  Ibid. 18  W.  Bastone and J.  Gonnerman, ‘Busting the King of Club Kids’, Village Voice, 17 December 1996, 37. 19  R. Bailey and R. Barbato (dir.), Party Monster: The Shockumentary, at 16:30–17:20. 20  D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 16 17

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environment of individualism and privatization.21 Political and economic power privileged sexual and gender diversity for purposes of profit, but in ways that depoliticized it and marginalized, erased, or criminalized racial, immigrant, and ethnic subjectivities in privatized publics such as NYC’s nightlife empire. When Peter Gatien invested in the ‘creative’ and glamorous innovations of Alig and his club kids, he at the same time promoted a spirit of self-made queers and entrepreneurship that discouraged racial democracy. Of course, the homonormative queer scene did bring positive change in various respects. According to Peter Drucker, the club kids were inspiring and legendary because of their ability to ‘undeniably [move] sexual liberalization [forward] and expand sexual possibilities’ of eccentrically gay and gender variant subjects within prior heteronormative-only and sexually repressive dominant publics.22 For queer youth of color, being a part of this sexual and gender nonconforming scene could be empowering—if you were accepted by them. Club kid Walt Paper remembers that Alig could act ‘like an old Hollywood boss grooming you’. He designed or approved of club kids’ personas and costuming, which were racially depoliticized and dehistoricized. Alig helped whiten club kids like Ernie Garcia and Desi Santiago (both with Hispanic surnames) by giving them official club kid names like Ernie Glam and Desi Monster that erased their Latino identities and possible connection with low-brow black and brown audiences and their politics. Instead, this club kid glamour was a chic that celebrated a consumptive white(ned) homonormativity. For example, in Party Monster (2003), there is a scene when Angel (played by Wilson Cruz) introduces himself as Angel to Michael Alig to enter a party. Alig (played by Macaulay Culkin) as the gatekeeper of his scene asks Angel: ‘Where are your wings?’23 In that moment, Alig whitens Angel by ‘grooming’ him to wear wings but displacing the racial and social marker the name Angel has for ‘low-brow’ urban working-class Latino men as a nickname or actual name. Alig’s commercial insight is shown in the fact that these personas provided safe forms of queer consumption that sidelined underprivileged racial, ethnic, and class markers among chosen club kids. Club goers treated these club kids, with their personas and costuming, as actual privileged celebrities. The Village Voice columnist Michael Musto  Ibid., 46–47.  Drucker, ‘Gay Normality and Queer Transformation’. 23  Party Monster (2003), at 30:00–31:00. 21 22

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has claimed that in the 1990s, ‘one went to see these club kids instead of actual famous people’. By ‘grooming’ the club kids in this way, Alig pushed to the background the club kids’ collective memory of the struggles in New  York’s downtown regarding racial and queer equality, in favor of glamorized and homonormative identities. At the same time, Alig and the (nightlife) industry provided a sense of belonging to the club kids, as he ‘gave them names, dressed them up and told them what their personalities were going to be’.24 To stay chosen as a club kid, most went along with these whitewashed values. In hindsight, some comment critically on their behavior. St. James stated: ‘It was a vampiric kind of thing. These people would follow [Alig] around and worship him.’25 Walt Paper has stated that ‘people would follow him [Alig] like ducks’.26 The loyalty of many club kids to Alig reached its apex in the period following the murder of Angel Melendez.

A Racial History of NYC’s Rave Scene New York City’s 1990s rave scene comprised five prominent rave parties, all with their own character and fan base: STORMrave, Future Shock, Disco 2000, NASA, and Tunnel Saturdays. Mireille Silcott has highlighted the diversity of the rave scene, stating: ‘If the history of rave proves anything, it’s that the rave format is wide open to interpretation and sculpted by set and setting’.27 The parties developed different ‘interpretations’ of rave, particularly in reference to race and gender, Afrocentric music genealogies, and commodification. While some embraced the queer scene and ‘the original gay-Black house model’, others developed techno music, claiming that because it was ‘rendered straight ’n white, this thing could go places black ’n gay could not’.28 The divisions between house and techno were deepened in the early 1990s by the rise of white DJs such as Larry Dee, Frankie Bones, and Joey Beltram. Frankie Bones and Adam X organized the first STORMrave party in 1991 in Brooklyn and later continued to organize raves in Staten Island 24  E. Meers, ‘Codes of Silence: For months gay “club kids” in New York City kept quiet about [Angel’s] grisly murder’, Advocate, 4 February 1997, 49–50. 25  Ibid. 26  Glory Daze, at 16:23. 27  M. Silcott, Rave America: New School Dancescapes (Toronto: ECW Press, 1999), 43 28  Ibid., 41–42.

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and Long Island.29 Charles Aaron, Spin Magazine’s editorial director, ‘who began raving in the early 90’s’, later reminisced: ‘I think what fascinated me about the STORM raves [was that] the music was just so ferocious and intense and macho. […] It’s so much about this wound-up energy. […] They didn’t […] want […] to express it through the pre-­ existing [disco and house] music.’30 Aaron reveals here that Bones and his alliance of mostly borough-raised Italian American DJs created a racialized and gendered space (‘macho’) for white male ravers to exert their energy and claim their white masculinity on a musical project that distanced itself from blackness or non-whiteness and gayness. The overwhelming majority of the first ravers who attended these parties were white working-class to middle-class borough youths who were energized by this refreshing outdoor dance marathon that challenged nightclub and Afrocentric house music conventions. Frankie Bones and his team of DJs, however, had an unrelenting competitor in Michael Caruso, aka Lord Michael, a promoter for Limelight. Caruso also threw raves in the outer boroughs and eventually organized two hardcore techno parties at Limelight called Adrenalin and Future Shock.31 Although the music was basically the same, a big difference was that Caruso incorporated his party into Peter Gatien’s nightlife empire rather than keeping it underground, pure, and not profit-driven in the boroughs. Caruso envisioned techno as a commercial undertaking, capable of ‘taking us there’ and filling Gatien’s nightclubs to capacity while ‘forget[ting] mushy house’.32 As Gatien and his promoters were interested in profiting by catering to high-paying majority-white customers, they wittingly or unwittingly introduced rigid racial and social hierarchies into the rave scene. In Glory Daze, club kid Walt Paper claimed that ‘there was an A crowd, B crowd, C 29  S. Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999); Silcott, Rave America; M.  Matos, The Underground is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America (New York: William Morrow Publishers, 2015); D.  Sicko, Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010). 30  M. Matos, ‘Limelight: The Rise and Fall of the Church of Rave’, NPR, http://www. npr.org/sections/therecord/2011/09/26/140804608/limelight-the-rise-and-fall-of-thechurch-of-rave [accessed on 15 September 2017]. 31  Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy, 146–147. 32  B.  Corbin (dir.) Limelight: The Rise and Fall of New  York’s Greatest Nightclub Empire (2011).

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crowd, and D crowd’, thus illustrating the enactment of deep social and class hierarchies and borders within the scene. Meanwhile, Bones’ crowd was labeled ‘bridge and tunnel’ by the select ‘in’ crowd of Peter Gatien’s Clubland, especially Michael Alig’s club kid society.33 ‘Bridge and tunnel’ referred to a crowd perceived as low-brow and potentially criminal or violent, working class, white ethnic, brown, and black and from outside Manhattan. They were thought to be unfit and undesirable in the glamorous nightlife scenes unless they could successfully hide their racial, geographic, lower class, and cultural origins. In the documentary film Limelight, filmmaker Billy Corbin portrays ‘bridge and tunnel’ ethnic white Italian Americans from Staten Island as low-brow, outer-borough ravers in a dance space where they could only mingle if they were lucky with white(ned) glamorous ‘in’ or ‘A-list’ club kids and high-end customers. It is telling that Limelight did not include any club kids of color perspectives in its story. Bringing in these perspectives would inevitably raise the topic of racism in the scene. Michael Alig’s initial ‘genius’ lay in inspiring an ‘anything goes’ sexual and gender diversity that also appeared racially inclusive in Clubland’s rave scene. It led to the rise of the Limelight’s filled-to-capacity rave parties. Even so, race very much played a role in Alig’s musical and commercial decisions. Alig’s signature party at the Limelight, Disco 2000, became the most successful and profitable party in Clubland. According to Larry Tee, who helped Alig run Limelight’s Disco 2000 raves, Alig decided to play techno early onward, explaining: ‘We made a decision not to play house on the main floor because he wanted the latest, newest sound’.34 Screamin’ Rachel, another club kid, who became successful as a house music vocalist, claims however that the sidelining of house music was intended to displace or exclude a largely non-white house crowd: ‘Behind the scenes [T]hey wouldn’t let me put the term “house music” on the party invitation because they thought it would attract blacks, even though they played house in the club’.35 She further remembers: ‘Old school hip hop legends like Melle Mel and Afrika Bambaataa […] Alig turned [them] away’.36 Journalist Frank Owen even quotes Alig as saying: ‘We don’t want stupid  Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy, 146.  Matos, The Underground is Massive, 112 35  F. Owen, Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 159. 36  Ibid. 33 34

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[n-word] or lowlife spics coming to the club. When the [n-word] start showing up, you know your club is over.’37 Screamin’ Rachel’s account suggests that Alig wanted to maintain an exclusively white(ned) club space inspired by (the binary between) techno and house, an Afrocentric musical form. Alig’s use of ‘lowlife (n-word) and spics’ shows what subjects he wanted to keep out. In recent films such as Glory Daze, however, these exclusionary politics are erased and instead a supposed unity and diversity of club kid culture is celebrated. Club kid Walt Paper describes the 1990s scene as a ‘global village’. Club kid Astro Earl claims that in the scene, ‘it could be like a midget, a tranee, a hasidic jew, a chelsea gay, a club kid, a raver, a gothic and we all got along’. As a result, a colorblind inclusion is suggested and celebrated, while in reality white-coded subcultures and ethnicities were privileged.

Angel as a Wannabe: Being an Unchosen Club Kid Despite his association with Michael Alig’s club kids and being the ‘king’s’ roommate, Angel Melendez was not really fit to successfully belong among Michael Alig’s club kids. Even though Alig now claims that Angel was part of the club kid family, it is evident from many of the club kids’ and promoters’ recollections that he was not liked by most. In Glory Daze, St. James simply affirms: ‘I didn’t like Angel very much’. Angel’s costume, which had wings accentuating his nickname—‘Angel’, a typical nickname for urban Latinos, specifically Boricua and Chicano men—was too revealing of his personal life and racial and ethnic identity, which did not seem glamorous to those in the club kid scene. Furthermore, Angel’s costume choice went against the club kid glamour as it was also influenced by aesthetics of youth of color scenes like the queer pier scene of the West Village. In Glory Daze, Angel is described as ‘a pier queen’, which has deep yet unspoken racial implications to a white(ned) club kid scene but is insufficiently contextualized for a broader audience. In the film, journalist Frank Owens describes Angel as ‘part of that rough gay crowd that hung around the West Village Piers’. The pier queer scene was a local queer of color youth scene, where queer of color drug dealers also found belonging. The mainly white residents of the neighborhood did not welcome these youths, who were perceived as dangerous, criminal, and loiterers. By characterizing Angel as a ‘pier  Ibid.

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queen’, the dominant narrative reduces Angel to a low-rung drug dealer and a wannabe club kid and a ‘poser’. In The Tenets of Neoliberalism, Henry Giroux explains a colorblind strategy of language to thwart perceptions of racism by producing less overt versions. In light of this, I see language in The Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1998) that could harbor racist overtones. For example, Michael Alig opens the documentary by talking directly about Angel: ‘He was a copycat […] one of those copycats we hate’.38 Alig’s use of ‘hate’ to describe his feeling toward ‘copycats’, and toward Angel Melendez in particular, is a reflection of racial overtones that are often hidden or downplayed by this colorblind strategy of language. According to Giroux, ‘marketplace ideologies now work to erase the social from the language of public life so as to reduce all racial problems to private issues such as individual character and cultural depravity’.39 For example, Alig’s use of words such as ‘copycat’ or ‘wannabe’, as well as club kid Gitsie’s use of the word ‘tacky’ to describe Angel’s costume, can be seen as colorblind enunciations that demean Angel as a ‘lowlife’, brown, undesirable immigrant who does not belong among the white(ned) and favored entourage of club kids. Another way in which Giroux sees those in power hide racial overtones is by posing a ‘leave it up to the market’ view. Those in power justify neoliberal projects of development by claiming that everyone has a shot at achieving success through individual self-sufficiency and effort. Rather than blaming structural social and racial inequalities, this ideology claims that the market decides whether individuals ‘make it’ or not. In a similar way, Walt Paper claims that Angel did not have what it took by saying he ‘wasn’t fabulous enough’ or ‘couldn’t penetrate the upper level with his [whitewashed] looks or expression’.40 In Glory Daze, Paper puts it simply: ‘He wasn’t really A-list’.41 Giroux explains that neoliberal values celebrate individual freedom, ‘a freedom […] no longer linked to a collective effort on the part of individuals to create a democratic society’.42 In other words, in a dominant neoliberal public, one’s individual character, in this case

 Party Monster: Shockumentary, at 1:49–2:05  H. Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism (Boulder CO: Paradigm, 2004), 57. 40  Glory Daze, at 54:50. 41  Ibid., at 53:40. 42  Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism, 62. 38 39

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Angel’s, is emphasized over collective markers of race, ethnicity, and class—despite how relevant these are to how individuals fare. Using Paper’s words, Angel Melendez had an ‘expression’ and a ‘look’ that was too racial and too immigrant to make it in the club scene. Angel’s racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural excess were both voluntarily and involuntarily unwavering. He wore his racial and immigrant markings too visibly, and possibly proudly, on his sleeve. We do not know whether he wanted to exude those individual markers or, on the contrary, knew that he could not play a fabulous, whitewashed role. Ernie Glam (club kid Ernie Garcia, who also played Clara the Carefree Chicken) says in Glory Daze that ‘Angel had this paranoia that people were making fun of him. That people secretly didn’t like him or that we were all laughing about him behind his back.’ Glam’s reminiscence may be reflective of Angel’s own sense of not-belonging. The ‘paranoia’ may have sprung from Angel’s sense of inferiority or feeling less than those among an A-list of white(ned) club kids. But Angel really was not erroneously paranoid given some of the views that the club kids and promoters expressed in the abovementioned films. They reveal a disliking or even hatred of him that ended in his murder. While Owen does not discuss the racism in the club scene in detail, he briefly raises the club kids’ views by saying, ‘a pronounced streak of racism ran through the club kid scene’.43 And he specifically mentions Angel’s case, stating that ‘many of the club kids looked down their powdered noses at [him] because he was Latino’.44 In Glory Daze, club kid Astro Earl recounts Alig telling him once: ‘I wish Angel were dead’. In another moment, Steven Lewis, a major promoter for Gatien’s clubs, passionately says: ‘I didn’t like Angel, I thought he was a piece of shit. If you lined up people that should die, he would be near the front.’ In the same film, Walt Paper explains: ‘Michael [Alig] was putting drug dealers [like Angel] on payroll not because they were fabulous but because he wanted x amount of drugs to be available for the party’. Paper goes on to say that ‘[posers like Angel] would [hang around the A-list club kids] by becoming drug dealers’. On a fateful Sunday, Angel went to Alig’s apartment to collect a large debt owed to him for Alig’s drug use. Robert Riggs was there also and yelled at Angel: ‘This is why nobody ever likes you. If you weren’t a  Owen, Clubland, 159.  Ibid.

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drug pusher, you wouldn’t have any friends.’ Ironically, it was at that moment that Angel, according to Alig’s testimony, was the first to get physically confrontational and started choking Alig. In Glory Daze, Alig explained: ‘[Riggs’ blunt insult] hit him so hard’. But what ensued was a hateful crime committed by two drugged up white men full of pent-up ill feelings toward Angel. Riggs took a hammer and clubbed him on the head three times, leaving half-moon dents on his skull.45 Moments after, Alig finished Angel off by holding a pillow over his head and pouring Drano down his throat. Alig and Riggs placed Angel’s lifeless body in Alig’s bathtub, where it stayed for days. Later, under the influence of heroin, Alig dismembered Angel and shoved his remains into a cardboard box that he and Riggs threw into the Hudson River. Alig’s other confidant, club kid Gitsie, is quoted saying that ‘Angel was tacky—He deserved to die’.46

Was Angel ‘Like the Rest of Us’?: Alig’s Post-Prison Trivializations In this section, I examine a Huffington Post post-prison interview with Michael Alig, produced a week after Alig’s release, which focuses on his exit from prison, the 1990s club kid scene and Alig’s relationship with Angel.47 Like in Glory Daze, the interviewer, Huffington Post’s Queer Voices editor James Michael Nichols, offers moments of critique but falls short of deeply centering at any point on the topic of race/racism in Alig’s relationship with Angel. In effect, Alig’s narrative downplays Angel’s negative treatment and outlier positioning among the club kids. Even so, Nichols remains skeptical about Alig’s retelling of the story, saying: ‘And you at this point get to be the face, you get to come out, you get to do the interviews and Angel is still gone’.48 In the Huffington Post interview, Alig downplays the racial aspect of Angel’s murder by simply not mentioning the murder and therefore favoring the standing narrative  Glory Daze, at 1:09:00.  Owen, Clubland, 158. 47  J. Nichols, ‘“Party Monster” Michael Alig Tell All After Being Released From Prison’, Huffington Post, 5 December 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-alig-huffpost-live_n_5311434?guccounter=1 [accessed on 13 June 2019]. The full interview was available on YouTube via, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVI3DicsRgc [accessed on 1 April 2018]. 48  The full interview, at 26:00. 45 46

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that explains the murder by inappropriate drug use and media hype. Thus, Alig claims that he was drugged up and that his club kid friends (including himself) employed savvy ‘media pranks’ that exaggerated the storylines (including Alig’s actions and remarks) to gain media coverage. When Nichols confronts Alig with the scene in Shockumentary (1998) in which he said, ‘he was a copycat […] so we killed him’, Alig disqualifies the quote entirely, saying it was ‘slightly disingenuous’ to publish it. Instead, Alig emphasizes that he was ‘very high’ at the time and that he does not recognize himself in that scene. By claiming that he does not know his current self in that scene from 1998, Alig aims to convey to his audience that he is a changed and remorseful person, while furthermore framing the murder not as a hate crime but as a freak accident and not a true reflection of his person. By discrediting quotes as mentioned above, Alig is inviting his fans and audiences to give the new and remorseful Michael Alig a chance. Alig even asserts that Angel ‘was part of the family’ and challenges the frequent depiction of Angel being disliked, sidelined, and unchosen among the A-list club kids. By doing so, he seems to offer a revised depiction of his relationship with Angel and the other club kids that is less hostile and exclusionary. He explains: In spite of how the media has portrayed our relationship with Angel, you know […] it’s this gallows humor thing. I have the same relationship [with Angel], with me and James, me and Walt Paper, me and Keoki. All of us have this relationship where we can be very sarcastic and send barbs back and forth with each other. […] That’s how we show our affection, strangely enough. It’s the same with Angel, yes, did we ever make fun of his clothes or did we ever make fun of some aspect of his personality, absolutely. But, on the other hand, he was just like the rest of us. […] When he came and was part of the fold, he was part of the club kids. He was part of the family […] he was very loved, you know, despite what horrible things we might have been quoted as saying in the newspapers. He was at our house. We had dinner with him all the time. He was very loved. He was happy. In spite of what happened in the end. He was in a good place.49

 Ibid., at 25:22

49

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With such remarks, Alig attempts to erase the social and racial inequalities and violence that Angel experienced among Michael Alig’s ‘A-List’ club kids. He is careful only to articulate colorblind ‘barbs’ such as ‘mak[ing] fun of his clothes or personality’, without mentioning the ethnic or racial characteristics of Angel and his clothes that he was making fun of or disqualifying him for. And instead of admitting that Angel was really an outsider, Alig erases Angel’s proven outcast position by claiming that ‘he […] was part of the fold […] was part of the family’. During the interview, Nichols expresses deep concern over Alig’s use of this interview for his self-benefit, seeing it as an attempt to erase the (racial) hatred of Angel and redescribing his actions in order to humanize him and the 1990s club kid scene to prepare the ground for his comeback. As a result of this redescription, Angel’s full story continues to go untold. I argue that this media clip is another example of the dominant narrative that excludes perspectives of others who truly valued or loved Angel. Without their accounts, Angel’s full story will remain forgotten.

Research Implications Behind Michael Alig’s rise, there was a significant amount of racial exclusion within the club kid scene, promoted by neoliberal projects of industry and development. In this section, I note five areas that researchers must consider when gathering interviews and primary sources to articulate alternative narratives of racial democracy that stand against whitewashed mainstream and subculture narratives. In doing so, researchers will be able to include youth of color perspectives and experiences that often stand at the margins. What White(ned) Only Means For researchers, it should always be a flag when white(ned) bodies in music scenes are glamorized while bodies of color are nonexistent. In a white supremacist society that promotes privatization over racial democracy, mobile white(ned) bodies will always be privileged and remain superior while bodies of color are excluded and criminalized. The media productions raised in this chapter only include privileged white(ned) actors in a network of power, deliberately leaving out people of color perspectives and knowledge to sustain a white(ned) privatized context. Given that approach, a majority of bodies of color will continue to face exclusions

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that instill boundaries and hierarchies. Researchers must detect these harmful racist practices, including colorblind language and a (depoliticized) diversity that is seemingly inclusive. Alig’s scene of whitewashed queer diversity instructed and policed youth of color to leave their racial and ethnic excess behind. The Biographical Researchers must seek for racial subjectivity and knowledge of whitened bodies within a neoliberal and privatized context through interviewing and ethnographic fieldwork. In the media productions about Alig and his club kids, most of the club kids are never asked about their personal life and upbringing, nor do they offer it. Instead, they offer the image and persona that sells. Given the racist and Hispanophobic sentiments voiced within the club kid scene, it is notable that brown club kids like Ernie Glam, Astro Earl and Keoki did not share nor were they asked about their racial backgrounds. The media productions thus decontextualize their personal stories to reify neoliberal ideologies and discourses that value the (sellable) individual in a privatized context. José Muñoz has explained that this form of disidentification by minorities functions as ‘a survival strategy that works within and outside the dominant public sphere simultaneously [or in this case, the privatized nightlife sphere]’.50 The minority subject simultaneously acknowledges his/her cultural excess and subverts it to ‘follow a conformist path if they hope to survive a hostile public sphere’.51 Being a brown or black yet whitened club kid could have given minority subjects a sense of community, status, and mobility that they may not have had in their everyday lives. Researchers must construct alternative narratives that seek to show the true self while acknowledging the ‘conformist path’ within the scene. Researchers have a responsibility to document—as best as possible—people’s authentic origins while understanding how chosen minority subjects arrived in white(ned) scenes that dehistoricize their racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds. Finally, the fact that some youth of color from non-­ white or immigrant backgrounds were privileged in this scene does not necessarily mean they should be immediately judged as bad individuals. In 1996, New York Times reporter David Kocieniewski interviewed Johnny Angel, Angel’s brother, who explained how Angel wanted to be part of this ‘interesting world’ where the values of ‘individual freedom’ motivated him 50  J. Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (University of Minnesota: Minneapolis, 1999), 5. 51  Ibid.

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to be ‘in’ and successful with the club kids, even if the racial projects at play did not favor him. It is important to consider how Angel and other club kids and club goers were influenced by, enjoyed, and assumed the values of individual freedom in this dominant and colorblind public despite their racially and geographically marked ‘bridge and tunnel bodies’. ‘The Underbelly’ Because the documentary films used for this chapter only portray those at the top and thus privilege their perspectives and experiences, they leave the impression that only they or those who have similar racial and social markers matter. Those with the right subcultural capital are often treated as though only they have valid experience.52 In a 2006 blog post, long-­ standing Queens Colombian American activist Andres Duque responded to an article in Un Chin Magazine, claiming: ‘Angel Melendez was Somebody’. The Latino magazine had just before published an article that featured the club kid subculture ‘fashion spread’, which failed to mention Angel Melendez’s Latino identity as ‘a Colombian born man’ (per Duque’s words), simply describing Angel as a drug dealer and not even recognizing him as being a club kid himself. Duque criticizes the magazine’s glaring omission of a gay Latino man in the scene because he was not a chosen, white(ned) club kid and was a drug dealer and states that ‘the underbelly’ of a subculture matters too. He uses the term ‘underbelly’ precisely to refer to Angel and other non-white subjects who are on the margins of subcultures, like the ‘bridge and tunnel’ crowd. Especially for journalists and researchers, it is important to examine their experiences, which are just as valid as the experiences of those at the top. It is for example highly interesting that Jimi Dava, patron and promoter at Limelight and one of the few Limelight staffers who affirmed his liking for Angel in Glory Daze—calling him a ‘nice guy’—mentions that Angel ‘always came from the side’.53 Unlike the other club kids who always entered with entitlement into Clubland dance floors and rooms, Angel did not, which is revealing about his own self-perception. In light of this, it is crucial to compile those subjects’ interpretations and experiences of the underbelly, and the meaning and value ‘white(ned) at the top’ rather than racially democratic scenes had for them. 52  S. Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). 53  Glory Daze, at 54:41–54:47.

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The Center Is Disputable Most of the earlier mentioned films put A-list club kids and promoters and impresario Peter Gatien at the center of NYC nightlife. These films sell a subjective centeredness, neglecting various shades of gray. Thus, productions like The Shockumentary or Glory Daze discuss the blind loyalty the club kids had to Alig (‘They followed [Alig] like ducks’). While Glory Daze is subtly critical of this loyalty, there is no discussion of an alternative except for Angel’s liminal positioning of having access but not truly belonging. Ultimately, there is no gray: you were either blindly loyal or not. For a historically accurate account of how subcultures work, it is important to move beyond such binary assumptions and ask whether there were youth that were critical of these power relations and enjoyed other scenes as well, including more racially democratic ones. In my own research, I found that New Jersey youth of color who enjoyed the club kid scene were critical of Clubland (i.e. referring to the Limelight as the Slimelight), yet still consumed it while also enjoying other local house and hip hop music scenes they identified with more and/or preferred. Supermarket of Style In light of the last topic, it is important to consider how minority subjects simultaneously identify with different scenes that have vastly different values or racial compositions. Researchers must examine how youths express different associations simultaneously through performance, dress, and group-making. Also, certain scenes compensate for other values or characteristics by including queerness or non-white racial subjectivities that are not found in other scenes. Subjects assume a post-subculture moment in which there is a mixing of two or more subcultures, or what Ted Polhemus terms ‘a supermarket of style’ that allows individuals to create their own hybrid image and styles, and author their own image and style.54 In the case of club kid subculture, a supermarket of style could disrupt power and control over a fan base that looked to other scenes. Being and looking glamorously homonormative could be part of an individual’s own supermarket of 54  T. Polhemus, ‘In the Supermarket of Style’ in S. Redhead, D. Wynne, and J. O’Connor (eds.), The Clubcultures Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 148–151; A.  Bennett, ‘Club Culture and Neo-Tribes’ in J. Green (ed.), DJ, Dance and Rave Culture: Examining Pop Culture (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2005), 98–104; R. Haenfler, Subcultures: The Basics (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2014).

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style. For example, Walt Paper briefly mentions that Angel Melendez was “a punk hardcore kid who enjoyed going to CBGB”.55 We also know that he was in the pier scene and was a club kid as well. Considering how Angel identified with these three scenes, how did the values in the punk and queer pier scenes make up for values and characteristics that were not represented in the club kid scene? What facets of Angel’s personality and self-determination could he explore in the punk and queer pier scenes that he could not as easily do within the club kid scene?

Conclusion In this chapter, I have challenged the dominant colorblind narrative of the history of the 1990s New York City club kid scene and, most importantly, the story of Angel Melendez’s murder. By focusing on Angel’s experience within the club scene and his murder, this chapter offers an alternative understanding of the racial exclusions and hateful ideologies and (colorblind) discourses Angel and other minority subjects experienced in subtle or openly violent ways. The urgency of this chapter stems from the fact that Angel’s full story continues to be sidelined and devalued in order to maintain Michael Alig’s reputation as a commodifiable subject for today’s creative industries. Angel was more than a drug dealer. Angel’s leadership at Elizabeth High School is one he impacted all youth especially queer youth of color in his everyday life as a brown-skinned club kid who was eccentrically gay in an immigrant Latino majority heteropatriarchal town. The (re)telling of Alig’s rise and fall in documentary films and other popular histories glamorizes the heyday of 1990s nightlife club kid creativity. Behind this lies a clear commercial consideration: the story of Alig’s impact on NYC nightlife and Angel’s murder continues to sell. In response, Alig continues to capitalize on an erased past of racial violence and exclusion that must be critically addressed, especially among today’s youth club kids and nightlife club goers. Alig is undeniably a creative force and legend who popularized queer nightlife in New York City and empowered disenfranchised youth. He could greatly contribute to today’s (club kid) nightlife and today’s creative industry. However, by avoiding the racist nature of his past rather than addressing it as a lesson for today’s youth to promote genuine inclusion and democracy, Alig proves not to be truly remorseful and continues influencing others to repeat the same kinds of subtle and overt colorblind exclusions and violence.  Glory Daze, at 54:07-54:12.

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CHAPTER 8

‘From the Dark Past’: Historiographies of Violence in Norwegian Black Metal Ross Hagen

Tell me what did you see there? In the darkness of the past… —Mayhem, ‘From the Dark Past’ (1994)

Memory is a fluid and fragmentary phenomenon. According to the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, the act of remembering also involves a simultaneous act of forgetting, as both unconscious memory and deliberate memorialization are selective by nature. Historical research and history writing, then, involves a struggle over what is worth remembering, and how it should be remembered. Such debates become more fraught when the events in question involve criminal activities and violent actions. This chapter focuses on the musical genre of black metal, an underground style of extreme heavy metal music that grew to international prominence because of serious crimes perpetrated by Norwegian black metal musicians in the early 1990s. The media spectacle of black metal in Norway has continued to haunt the genre’s history even as many of the style’s practitioners and fans

R. Hagen (*) Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_8

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attempt to move beyond it. Although heavy metal has long had associations with violence, suicide, and youth delinquency, reaching an apex of sorts in the 1985 U.S.  Senate hearings inspired by the concerns of the Parent’s Music Resource Center, the lives of heavy metal fans and musicians have rarely lived up to the hype.1 The Norwegian black metal scene in the mid-­1990s provides one of the few examples in which metal’s artistic fantasies of transgressive violence and destruction became realized. During this time, a number of Norwegian black metal musicians participated in around fifty arson attacks against Christian churches, which they later framed as acts of retribution against the Christianization of Norway in the tenth century and as protests against multicultural modernity.2 The violence came to a head in August 1993 when the black metal musician Varg Vikernes murdered Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth, the guitarist of the band Mayhem (in which Vikernes was playing bass at the time) and a leading figure in the scene. The murder investigation uncovered others who had participated in church arsons, and revealed that drummer Bård Eithun of Emperor was responsible for the fatal stabbing of Magne Andreasson, a gay man from Lillehammer whose murder had gone unsolved for more than a year. The ensuing trials became a source of intense media scrutiny and sensationalism, propelling the formerly underground black metal music style to a position of international recognition and notoriety. Vikernes was sentenced to 21 years in prison, and during his imprisonment, he began disseminating ethnocentric and radical nationalist tracts through interviews and other publications. Presently, more than twenty-­five years after the crimes that brought it to light, black metal music is a fully globalized musical style and an integral cog in the international metal music industry. However, the mythologies of the Norwegian scene in the 1990s continue to cast a long shadow even as the genre has been embraced and cultivated both by the music industry and by arbiters of Norwegian culture and tourism. A number of memoirs and documentaries on Norwegian black metal have been produced in the intervening years, many of which promise to provide a neglected perspective or a corrective to previous misinformation, 1  For example, in the U.S. Senate hearings, singer Dee Snider of Twisted Sister emphasized the fact that he is married, a father, a Christian, and that he does not smoke, drink, or do drugs. 2  G.  Mørk, ‘Why Didn’t the Churches Begin to Burn a Thousand Years Earlier’ in T. Bossius, A. Häger, and K. Kahn-Harris (eds.), Religion and Popular Music in Europe: New Expressions of Sacred and Secular Identity (London: I.B. Touris, 2011), 124–144.

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particularly regarding the sensationalist media coverage in the 1990s. Additionally, there is a growing trend toward special reunions and ‘classic album play-through’ performances at concert tours and festivals, indicating that black metal has aged to the point at which nostalgia becomes lucrative.3 Yet within many of these nostalgic products, there is often an implicit, if not purposeful, agenda aimed at downplaying the violent and extremist aspects of Norwegian black metal’s past. This shift in perspective is perhaps unavoidable, if only because tales of arson, murder, radical nationalism, and the occult almost necessarily threaten to overwhelm any attempt to look beyond them. Researching and documenting black metal, then, requires facing the dilemma of how to accurately portray the essence and je ne sais quoi of this musical subculture without ignoring its nastier aspects or engaging in an apologia for them. For many black metal fans, however, the aura of violence that marked the Norwegian scene of the early 1990s is an essential component of the genre’s terroir, to borrow a term from viticulture. The crimes of the past lend black metal a transgressive authenticity that other metal subcultures lack, and this origin myth is one of the key facets of the symbolic boundaries and shared meanings that inform the ‘imaginary community’ of black metal.4 The discourses of authenticity within the global networks of black metal practitioners often hinge on questions of whether to celebrate or reject the Norwegian scene’s predilections for violence and radical nationalism. In particular, more fundamentalist factions within black metal have reacted to the growing diversity of the genre’s fan base with a purposeful retrenchment along political, racial, religious, and gender lines, sometimes using the genre’s violent origin story as a counterweight against calls for greater inclusivity.5 This retrenchment also creates a shield against the 3  The most prominent examples are the tours and festival appearances for Mayhem and Emperor in 2016 and 2017  in which they commemorated the twentieth anniversaries of their 1996 albums De Mysteriis dom Sathanas and Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, respectively. K.  Grow, ‘Mayhem’s Long Dark Road to Reviving a Black-Metal Classic’, Rolling Stone, 9 February 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mayhems-longdark-road-to-reviving-a-black-metal-classic-129097. [Accessed on 18 September 2018]; Metal Injection, ‘EMPEROR’s Ihsahn on 20 Years of Anthems, Lack of US Shows, New Album and more’, 10 August 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEnSldXxHdg. [Accessed on 18 September 2018]. 4  C. Lucas, M. Deeks, and K. Spracklen, ‘Grim Up North: Northern England, Northern Europe, and Black Metal’, Journal for Cultural Research vol. 15 (2011) no. 3, 279–295. 5  R.  Hagen, ‘Kvlt-er than Thou: Power, Suspicion, and Nostalgia within Black Metal Fandom’ in L. Duits, K. Zwaan, and S. Reijnders (eds.) The Ashgate Research Companion to

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sheer abundance of black metal music and products in the twenty-first century by reasserting the importance of the genre’s extreme undercurrents.6 Paradoxically, the very events that made black metal globally visible are in this context repurposed in attempts to re-obscure the genre and to reclaim its original status as a niche counterculture. The origin story of Norwegian black metal continues to haunt the genre, regardless of whether the events are embraced or disavowed. The result is a kind of recursive feedback loop in which the violence of the 1990s continually resurfaces and invites comment from participants and researchers. These origin myths of Norway essentially function as twenty-first-century oral histories that connect black metal practitioners around the globe even as they find divergent and contradictory meanings within. The research in this chapter is based primarily on analyses of the discourse of black metal fans as well as a meta-analysis of scholarly works, memoirs, and documentaries. In addition, this chapter is also inspired by fieldwork, active participation, and performance within black metal subcultures in the USA over the last few decades. This chapter is also particularly inspired by a visit to the Blekkmetal Festival, a music, film, and tattoo festival in Bergen, Norway, in November 2015. Blekkmetal was an explicitly nostalgic event and provided an opportunity to experience the ways in which Bergen’s black metal elders wished to memorialize the black metal scene of their youths.

Black Metal’s Stylistic History Although this chapter does not analyze musical style specifically, it is necessary to provide some musical and historical context for black metal as a musical genre. Black metal’s unorthodox sound forms much of its transgressive appeal and has come to carry connotations of darkness, wildness, and violence for many black metal fans and artists. Black metal is typically historicized into three ‘waves’ beginning in the 1980s with European Fan Cultures (London: Ashgate, 2014), 223–236. In 2014 the American website Death Metal Underground also attempted to inspire a campaign of online harassment against female metal journalists in the mold of GamerGate. See C. Van der Pol, ‘#MetalGate’, Death Metal Underground, 12 December 2014, http://www.deathmetal.org/article/metalgate. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]. 6  R. Hagen, ‘Kvlter than Thou’; G. Mørk, ‘“With my Art I am the Fist in the Face of God”: On Old-School Black Metal’ in J.A.  Petersen (ed.), Contemporary Religious Satanism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 171–198.

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bands like Bathory, Venom, Mercyful Fate, and Celtic Frost at the forefront. These bands and their cohort were working mostly within the idioms of thrash metal, with some influence from early hardcore punk bands like Discharge. The music was fast and harsh, featuring shouted, growled, or screamed vocals, and was often deliberately simplistic and even amateurish. However, at this point the defining features of the nascent genre were not grounded in a coherent musical style. Instead, an aesthetic and lyrical focus on occultism and ‘evil’ was the defining trait. The ‘second wave’ of black metal is the overriding concern of this chapter as this is when Norway enters the picture. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a small coterie of Norwegian bands including Mayhem, Immortal, Emperor, Darkthrone, and Burzum began to conceive of a self-identified ‘black metal’ style. Musically, these bands considered themselves to be a rejoinder to the perceived stagnation of death metal.7 They also frequently looked back to bands like Bathory and Mercyful Fate as models, demonstrating that even at this early point black metal musicians had one foot in the past. Second-wave black metal music still features harsh growled or screamed vocals, but also relies heavily on ‘tremolo picking’, a guitar technique based on extremely fast double-picking, and ‘blast-beat’ drumming, a similarly fast alternation between the snare and kick drum. Taken together, the effect is both assaultive and trance-inducing, as musical momentum can seem to be suspended by the unrelenting stream of sound. This effect is heightened by the fact that black metal music tends to rely on slower and simpler harmonic progressions than related genres like death metal.8 Their harmonic language borrows heavily from fantasy and horror films,9 and many black metal bands use keyboards to emulate orchestral or choral timbres. These Norwegian bands developed a coherent visual and theatrical aesthetic as well, most obviously found in the wearing of stark black-and-white ‘corpsepaint’ along with bullet belts, chain mail, swords, and other weaponry in promotional photographs and live performances. Many of the bands employ elaborate and semi-legible logos that signify for black metal insiders while simultaneously 7  I.  Reyes, ‘Blacker than Death: Recollecting the “Black Turn” in Metal Aesthetics’, Journal of Popular Music Studies vol. 25 (2013) no. 2, 240–257. 8  R. Hagen, ‘Ideology and Mythology in Norwegian Black Metal’ in H. Berger, P. Greene, and J. Wallach (eds.), Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 180–199. 9  B. Hainaut, ‘Fear and Wonder: Le fantastique sombre et l’harmonie des médiantes, de Hollywood au black metal’, Volume! vol. 9 (2012) no. 2, 179–197.

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confounding outsiders. This new-found sense of musical and aesthetic coherence, coupled with the sensationalistic coverage of the crimes mentioned above, contributed to Norwegian black metal’s visibility both among metal music fans and among the global music industries. Although black metal was already a trans-national style in the 1990s, with fans, musicians, and localized scenes across Europe and North America, along with pockets of activity in South America and Asia, Norway quickly assumed a dominant position. Over the latter half of the 1990s, black metal’s third ‘wave’ developed into an increasingly diverse and fractured musical scene as the music became more widely popular around the globe. Several black metal bands found significant commercial success, particularly Dimmu Borgir from Norway and Cradle of Filth from the UK. Many bands began incorporating musical ideas from other genres, including electronic music, progressive rock, and ‘shoegaze’ music. Black metal bands from the USA, Canada, and Eastern Europe also became increasingly prominent internationally. Extreme metal in general has also found a much wider audience since the late 1990s, due in no small part to the Internet, which cultivated online metal communities and made the music more widely available. Black metal bands now regularly headline large heavy metal festivals in Europe and North America, and also draw sizeable audiences in East Asia and South America. Along with these developments, more retro-minded bands look back to the rawness of the first-wave bands of the 1980s for inspiration. Thanks to this visibility, some symbols of black metal have become unmoored from their specific musical practices and fandoms, depriving the physical products of underground metal scenes of their utility as markers of subcultural capital and insider knowledge and experience.10 The increased availability of black metal ephemera from the past, along with continual additions to the archive in the present, has certainly contributed to the sense that black metal is in need of reassessment. Furthermore, the sheer number of active black metal bands around the world risks flooding the market with competent yet mimetic music, turning the genre into a ‘landfill’ of repetitive and undifferentiated albums and songs.11

10  Hagen, ‘Kylter than Thou’; K. Kahn-Harris, ‘Landfill Metal: The Ironies of Mediocrity’ in T. Karjalainen and K. Kärki (eds.), Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices, and Cultures (Helsinki: Aalto University, 2015). 11  K. Kahn-Harris, ‘Landfill Metal’.

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Given this growth and abundance, it follows that bands and albums from the past have also grown in importance as touchstones for the genre. Within musical and artistic traditions, the process of memorialization is deeply bound up with the formation of artistic canons, which work to form an official accounting of a tradition and to control the discourse around it. Although musical canonicity is most obviously present in the classical repertoire, canonic values and Great Works-style narratives have also informed much popular music history. As the musicologist Katherine Bergeron argues in Disciplining Music, musical canons echo Foucault’s invocation of the Panopticon by creating a type of social control that implies a powerful yet invisible higher authority or standard.12 Although metal music and other musical subcultures have always had unspoken codes of behavior and artistic values, the desire to control and categorize an ever-growing corpus of music and a diversifying fan base exposes the processes that reinforce these codes. Black metal’s canon represents a site of significant ideological struggle, as historical and musical knowledge is critical for guiding a music scene’s self-perception and sense of identity,13 because it serves to transmit cultural values as musical texts.14 The mythologizing of the crimes that took place in Norway and that scene’s subsequent dominance over the black metal imagination becomes a crucial question for the globalized scene as a whole. Continually returning to 1990s Norway not only makes an argument about the importance of those events in a Norwegian context, but also implicitly positions 1990s Norway as a kind of connective tissue between disparate past and present black metal scenes around the world. Indeed, there are many bands around the world who celebrate these connections wholeheartedly, including the violence of the past. Yet, those who would want to disentangle the musical and visual aesthetic from the actions of the Norwegians can also find themselves in a process of continual disavowal. The mythmaking process, then, becomes one in which these aspects of the past are highlighted and celebrated, or one in which the violence is downplayed or simply omitted from the story. Embracing black metal’s mythic notoriety heightens the experience of countercultural transgressiveness, 12  K. Bergeron and P. Bohlman, Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3–5. 13  K.  Negus, Popular Music in Theory (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 137–38. 14  P. Bohlman, The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 106.

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while minimizing this aspect of the black metal milieu can function variously as an act of domestication or a tactic employed to keep the myth from overwhelming the value of the music itself. Focusing on the music rather than the legendary violence also serves efforts by both participants and cultural institutions to claim black metal as an authentically Norwegian art form. For black metal scenes outside of Norway and Scandinavia, dismissing the importance of the Norwegian scene can also be an assertion of artistic independence and originality.

True Norwegian Black Metal This mythologizing process centers on a dilemma, in that black metal’s notoriety and commercial appeal depend on this connection with real-life violence and extremism, while at the same time such things have the potential to become problematic for fans and musicians alike. Even so, in the first decades of the twenty-first-century black metal in Norway has largely shed its pariah status and has become woven into the nation’s cultural fabric and even earned a measure of respectability. The black metal bands Emperor, Enslaved, Satyricon, and Dimmu Borgir have been regular nominees for the metal category of the annual Spellemannprisen awards in Norway. Music Norway, a promotional organization funded by the Ministry of Culture, financially supports black metal bands who tour internationally as a part of the organization’s overall mission to promote Norwegian music on the global stage.15 Norwegian music museums Rockheim and Popsenteret have sponsored exhibits of black metal ephemera, and art galleries in Europe and the USA have held shows of black metal-inspired artwork.16 In 2013, Satyricon debuted a new album at the Oslo Opera House with the participation of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet Chorus as a part of Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, a week-long festival featuring works of classical music, dance, and theatrical productions, electronic and improvised works, art installations, lectures,

 ‘Music Norway’, https://musicnorway.no. [Accessed on 20 September 2018].  ‘Welcome to Rockheim’, https://rockheim.no. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]; Popsenteret, ‘Norwegian Black Metal – Part one’, http://www.popsenteret.no/ExhDetails. aspx?ExbId=15. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]; A. Lehrer, ‘Norwegian Black Metal as a Conceptual Lens in Contemporary Art’, Forbes, 11 June 2018, https://www.forbes.com/ sites/adamlehrer/2018/06/11/norwegian-black-metal-as-a-conceptual-lens-in-contemporary-art/#346550e85556. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]. 15 16

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and youth outreach projects.17 Satyricon’s inclusion in this event evinces not only financial success but also realizes a certain kind of artistic ambition that sees them headlining a state-funded arts festival alongside luminaries of modern classical music. Black metal musicians have received other laurels as well, including the openly gay black metal vocalist Kristian ‘Gaahl’ Espedal’s award as the 2010 ‘Homo of the Year’ at the Bergen Gay Galla.18 Gylve ‘Fenriz’ Nagell, the drummer of the band Darkthrone, was elected a town councilman in his hometown of Kolbotn in 2016, even though he mounted an anti-election campaign in protest of his nomination. Black metal musicians have also become well-­known enough to be occasional guests on Norwegian game shows, talk shows, and dating shows. A small black metal tourism industry has also grown in Norway, focusing on metal festivals like Inferno in Oslo and on specific locales like the rebuilt Fantoft stave church in Bergen and the site of Euronymous’ old record store Helvete. In particular, tourists visit the basement of Helvete (now home to Neseblod, a record store and black metal museum) to take photos in front of the graffitied words ‘black metal’ that were in the background of several iconic photos from the early 1990s. It has become something like the crosswalk at Abbey Road in London, but on a much smaller scale. The development of black metal-centric tourism is a reflection of the fact that Norwegian black metal’s global appeal has always relied on an exoticized perception of Norway as a wild, isolated, forbidding, and magical place as opposed to a wealthy social democracy.19 Norwegian bands have played into this by occasionally including variations of the slogan ‘True Norwegian Black Metal’ on album art and T-shirts since the mid-­1990s. In a similar way, numerous other bands have used photographs and paintings of Nordic landscapes as artwork. While such 17  ‘Satyricon and the Norwegian National Opera Chorus’, in program notes for Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Oslo 2013), 24, https://ultima.no/uploads/files/ Magasin_2013_ENG.pdf. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]. 18  H.I. Hatland, ‘Her er Gaahls kjæreste’, Bergensavisen, 30 January 2010, https://www. ba.no/puls/her-er-gaahls-kjareste/s/1-41-4835636. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]; A.  Clifford-Napoleone, Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent (New York: Routledge 2015). 19  J.S. Podoshen, V. Venkatesh, J. Wallin, S.A. Andrezejewski, and Z. Jin, ‘Dystopian Dark Tourism: An Exploratory Examination’, Tourism Management vol. 51 (2015), 316–328. On the exoticization of Scandinavia and the North Atlantic, see P. Bohlman, ‘Musical Borealism: Nordic Music and European History’ in F. Holt and A. Kärjä (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 33–55.

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c­onceptions of the scene certainly helped to foster a sense of identity among the relatively small circles of active Norwegian black metal bands, they were also an effective marketing tool when aimed at international audiences. And indeed, the vision of Norway promoted by black metal bands focuses on fjords, mountain landscapes, trolls, Vikings, and Norse gods, sometimes to the point that it feels like a musical souvenir shop. For black metal fans from outside Scandinavia, this marketing likely results in an outsized conception of the role black metal plays in Norwegian society. However, this focus on the ancient history and mythology of Northern Europe also invites black metal fans and musicians around the world to adapt these symbols for their own use within this imagined Nordic community.20 The commercialization of Norwegian black metal and its criminal past is similar to the ways in which other collective traumas are repackaged as objects for mass entertainment. Jinhua Li notes that disaster films often serve to limit alternative and individualized memories in favor of a collective and shared vision, albeit one in which social and political implications are typically muted in order to represent the disaster as a cathartic consumable emotional event.21 Film adaptations are the most obvious examples in which traumatic events are transformed into commercial entertainments, but other sorts of memorials can perform a similar function, freezing the event in the past and in doing so subtly denying any continuing relevance in the present. Although the collective trauma of the violence in Norway provided a catalyst for the genre’s entry into the global music industry, the resulting commercialism has become one way that black metal practitioners keep from being painted into a corner by the genre’s legacy.

Musicians and Fans The violent past of the Norwegian black metal scene has created a conundrum for musicians in the twenty-first century who continue to work within the style. To be certain, much of the genre’s notoriety stems from the aura of danger created by those events and their extensive coverage in the media, and some bands make that an explicit part of their marketing.  Lucas, Deeks, and Spracklen, ‘Grim up North.  J.  Li, ‘Aftershock: The Cultural Politics of Commercializing Traumatic Memory’ in A. Wright (ed.), Film on the Faultline (Chicago: Intellect, 2015). 20 21

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For example, the merchandise booth for the band Mayhem’s 2016 American tour featured a shirt that read ‘BURN YOUR LOCAL CHURCH’ with an outline of a steeple engulfed in flame, and there have been Burzum shirts printed for years with a partial list of burned churches under the heading ‘Burzum Tour ’92: Coming Soon to a Church Near You’. In 1998, the German record label Century Media released Firestarter, a compilation CD of black and death metal bands which featured a large match packaged inside the spine of the jewel case.22 Black metal’s dominant position within the international metal music industry likewise owes much to this notoriety, although it also relies on the fact that the criminal activities of Vikernes and his coterie have, by and large, not been repeated in the decades since. Although the global entertainment industry has never shied away from promoting showbiz excesses and lucrative memorializations of deceased musicians, actual murder can be hard to sell. Real-life death and destruction are often only profitable so long as they remain comfortably in the past, and the relative calm of the intervening years has likely only made those events more legendary. In the years immediately following Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth’s murder, however, a number of black metal bands in Norway and beyond dedicated their albums to him, penned eulogies in their liner notes, and produced at least one tribute compilation. Dean Swinford argues that these tributes worked to both reify Aarseth as a mythologized patriarch of the black metal scene and to create a sense of communal discipleship among other black metal participants.23 In 2001, the German black metal band Nargaroth went so far as to record a song entitled ‘The Day Burzum Killed Mayhem’, which reads like a joke but instead seems to be an honest tribute to Aarseth and a meditation on how his murder sowed division within black metal scenes and contributed to the genre’s commercialization. Indeed, the deaths and crimes of the Norwegian black metal scene perhaps made it akin to a musical equivalent to Chris Rojek’s ‘black spots’, a term he uses to refer to sites of celebrity deaths, natural disasters, massacres, and concentration camps that have become commercial tourist attractions.24  Various, Firestarter, Century Black 7900–2 (compilation; 1998).  D.  Swinford, ‘Black Metal’s Medieval King: The Apotheosis of Euronymous through Album Dedications’ in R.  Hagen and R.  Barratt-Peacock (eds.), Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2019). 24  C. Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 1993), 136–172. 22 23

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More than two decades on, the assertion that ‘it’s all about the music now’ has become something of a mantra, particularly among older black metal musicians who are not particularly keen to continue reliving the deaths and criminal convictions of their friends and acquaintances. As one example, in a short documentary produced by the Norwegian public broadcast service, Mayhem’s bassist Jørn Stubberud discusses his anger at bootleg vendors who produce shirts with pictures of his dead bandmates on them, and the interviewer notes that for some fans a Mayhem tour is like a traveling murder scene.25 Further, the processes of continually writing, recording, and touring can cultivate a myopic focus on present activities, particularly for professionals. However, continually being confronted with those events might simply be the cost of doing business as a Norwegian black metal musician in the twenty-first century. Many black metal participants in the twenty-first century may also experience these mythologies as a constant background presence that rarely needs comment. Everyone knows the stories, and, in most contexts, there is no need to dwell on them. In fact, being overly caught up in those stories would at this point most likely mark someone as a novice in the world of black metal, and indeed some black metal musicians in more progressive bands find the continued focus on evil and darkness itself to be somewhat stunted and childish.26 In the documentary Once Upon a Time in Norway, the music journalist and record store owner Einar Englestad goes so far as to say that black metal bands in the twenty-first century that lack a sense of irony and humor are ‘pathetic’.27 This perception is where it becomes apparent how the commercialization and official cultural legitimation of Norwegian black metal has allowed musicians and fans to potentially escape from the shadow of the violence in the 1990s. The scene’s legend has always been a key entry point for new participants, but at this point, it is too well-known to carry much subcultural frisson for scene veterans. However, the low-level omnipresence of these mythologized murders and arsons also risks cultivating a conspiracy of silence 25  NRK, ‘Los Bambinos del Satan – On the Road with Mayhem’, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=5RF3B-RjWDg. [Accessed on 20 September 2018]. 26  D.  Patterson, Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2013), 479–480; H. Hunt-Hendrix, ‘Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism’ in N.  Masciandaro (ed.) Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1 (Charleston, SC 2010), 53–66. 27  P. Aasdal and M. Ledang (dirs.), Once Upon a Time in Norway. Grenzeløs Productions (documentary; 2007).

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around continuing threads of radical nationalism, misogyny, homophobia, and bigotry within black metal scenes.28 Furthermore, the implied tolerance for actual violence and crime in black metal’s past could potentially be used to portray efforts to combat bigotry in black metal scenes as fundamentally hypocritical in nature. Among black metal participants, the discussions of things like violence and racism have often involved a conscious effort to deny their impact, as opposed to simply ignoring them. Keith Kahn-Harris termed this ‘reflexive anti-reflexivity’,29 referring to the fact that black metallers know that such viewpoints exist within the black metal scene, but they willfully choose not to examine them or engage with their effects. Kahn-Harris noted the tactic in several magazine features on Varg Vikernes and Bard ‘Faust’ Eithun that either elided or outright ignored the reasons why these men were in prison. Similarly, racism, neofascism, and sexism within black metal scenes are often recontextualized as either having been in jest or simply a test of the limits of transgression, although Kahn-Harris notes that black metallers have typically performed these types of discursive transgressions in ‘safe spaces’ like online bulletin boards or private social media groups in order to minimize risk and consequences.30 Even the arsons in the 1990s took place in the middle of the night, which maximized the possibility of successfully destroying the structure and avoiding capture while simultaneously minimizing the potential for loss of life. Furthermore, the fact that the Norwegian scene in the 1990s targeted Christian churches as opposed to synagogues or mosques allowed them to attack religious institutions while avoiding being unequivocally tied to anti-Semitism or racism. Even the pithy memorial t-shirts mentioned above focus on destructions of property as opposed to the stabbing deaths of Aarseth and Andreasson. Overt politicization is comparatively rare 28  Invisible Oranges Staff, ‘Are You Talking to Me: Respecting Women in Metal’, Invisible Oranges, 18 May 2011, http://www.invisibleoranges.com/are-you-talking-to-me-respecting-women-in-metal. [Accessed on 21 September 2018]; L.  Dawes, What are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal (New York: Bazillian Points, 2012); S. Mathis, “The Problem with Heavy Metal is Metalheads: Stop Calling Everyone a Faggot’, Metal Injection, 22 October 2014, http://www.metalinjection.net/editorials/theproblem-with-heavy-metal-is-metalheads-stop-calling-everyone-a-faggot. [Accessed on 21 September 2018]. 29  K. Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 141–157. 30  Ibid., 152–56.

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within black metal scenes (even if denials of political intent often seem to be accompanied by a wink), and the desire to maintain a sense of community ensures that such divisiveness never becomes an existential threat. However, the effects of transgression are ultimately dependent on context. Part of the aura of black metal’s violent past is almost undoubtedly based in the recognition that if a group of young men began torching churches across Scandinavia in 2018 their crimes would almost certainly be treated as domestic terrorism rather than sensationalist tabloid fodder, particularly in the aftermath of the 2011 massacre in Utøya by Anders Breivik. For younger fans, nostalgia for a past they never experienced can be a subversive and countercultural stance, even as it fetishizes that imagined era. But if the crimes of the past inspire fascination or just a sense of detached amusement in the present, those moments of actual violence also exposed the problems that arise if the layers of fantasy and illusion are removed from metal.31 Although real-life murder, arson, and political extremism remain transgressive and provocative, they are also ultimately rather restrictive. Where can one go from there, especially if that limit was reached a generation ago? The experience of black metal and extreme metal in general is also one in which the transgressive aspects of the scene, including its modes of dress, musical style, lyrical themes and artwork, are balanced against more prosaic activities like correspondence, record collecting and tape trading, going to concerts, and discussing music.32 Because of this balance, criminal violence could never have remained a benchmark for participation in black metal because it would imperil the day-to-day experience of the black metal scene at all levels.

Histories and Documentaries It is not coincidental that this reassessment of the violent acts in black metal’s past comes alongside a growing niche within the publishing industry for nostalgic memorializations of underground metal scenes of the 1980s and 1990s. The advent of YouTube has also facilitated a number of shorter documentaries, live interviews, and video blogs made by official media outlets as well as by fans and musicians (including Varg Vikernes). 31  K. Kahn-Harris, ‘Beyond Transgression: Breaking Metal’s Boundaries’, Keynote address to the Boundaries and Ties: The Place of Metal in Communities Conference, Victoria, British Columbia (2017). 32  K. Kahn-Harris 2007, 55–67.

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As with the experiences of musicians and fans, the crimes of the Norwegian scene are a continual unspoken presence even for books and documentaries that are not explicitly focused on those events. However, histories and documentaries have often kept those crimes in the foreground, if only because the crimes are often what made black metal worthy of comment in the first place. After all, Norway’s black metal scene provides an almost irresistible story with compelling characters in an exotic locale. There is even a feature Hollywood film based on the early Norwegian scene slated for release in 2018, and in hindsight it is surprising that this has not happened sooner.33 It follows also that the mentions of black metal in more wide-ranging metal histories like Sam Dunn’s 2005 documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey or Ian Christie’s 2003 book Sound of the Beast tend toward sensationalism, playing up the violence and Satanism.34 Early documentaries and histories like Torstein Grude’s 1999 documentary Satan rir media (Satan Rides the Media) were also often focused almost exclusively on the violent and criminal activities of the early 1990s.35 Moynihan and Søderlind’s 1998 book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground was the first English book-length treatment of Norwegian black metal, and the title displays its focus on the more sensationalist aspects of the scene. Lords of Chaos also seems to be rather accommodating toward Varg Vikernes’ neo-fascist and racist views and dwells on obscure far-right propagandists and arcane Jungian theories of cultural archetypes, sparking the accusation that the book was a sneaky attempt to co-opt black metal for the far-right.36 Similarly, the 2010 film Until the Light Takes Us also focuses much of its attention on Vikernes’ philosophies and his personal recountings of his crimes but stops short of a

33  J. Åkerlund (dir.), Lords of Chaos. 4 ½ Film (2018) A further layer: although Åkerlund is a well-known director of music videos and concert films for major stars like Madonna and Taylor Swift, he was also the first drummer for the iconic Swedish black metal band Bathory. The actors from the film also recreated an early Mayhem gig for the video for Metallica’s ‘ManUNkind’ (2016). 34  S.  Dunn (dir.), Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Banger Productions (documentary; 2005); I.  Christie, Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal (New York 2003). 35  T.  Grude (dir.), Satan rir media (1999); M.  Lundberg (dir); M.  Moynihan and D.  Søderlind, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (Venice, CA 1998). 36  K.  Coogan, ‘How Black is Black Metal?’, Hitlist (February/March 1999), 33–49. It should be noted that the second edition of the book attempted to temper these aspects.

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critical exploration of his extreme political views.37 The 2007 documentary on Mayhem, Once Upon a Time in Norway, does attempt to take a more critical view of the bands’ past, however. Sven Erik (‘Maniac’) Kristiansen, one of Mayhem’s singers, describes a music scene driven by attempts to gain status and approval from Aarseth, which he claims fueled many of the acts of arson and vandalism. Several other interviewees in the film note that, in hindsight, Aarseth and Vikernes’s removal from the scene lifted a weight by excising the extremism that those two cultivated.38 Documentaries and histories that go beyond the main figures in the 1990s Norwegian scene have dealt with the legacy of violence in various ways. In the opening sequence of the film Blekkmetal, a documentary focused on the 2015 Blekkmetal music and tattoo festival in Bergen, Grutle Kjelsson, the bassist and singer of the band Enslaved, grimaces at the mention of the church arsons and murders and says ‘but let’s not get into that’.39 The film essentially honors Kjellson’s request, disengaging from historical concerns and focusing instead on extensive concert footage from the festival interspersed with interviews with the festival’s organizers, performers, and other artists and musicians from Bergen. However, the Blekkmetal documentary was initially produced as a memento for the festival’s producers, so it was perhaps not the proper venue for critical confrontations with uncomfortable memories. For other histories, like Dayal Patterson’s The Cult Never Dies series, the mythologies of the early 1990s are the unspoken backdrop for interviews with dozens of more obscure bands from across the globe. This more holistic approach decenters Norway somewhat, while at the same time many of the bands dutifully acknowledge its influence. However, as with other participants, there is often a ‘reflexively anti-reflexive’ reluctance to discuss divisive or potentially uncomfortable aspects of the scene’s history.40 Marilyn Watelet’s 1998 documentary Black Metal almost escapes the processes of mythmaking by focusing on a specific black metal scene without attempting an overarching narrative or even much context. Black Metal was shot mostly at a concert by the Belgian band Ancient Rites at the West Flanders venue Rock Temple. The event is striking in its  A. Aites and A. Ewell (dirs.), Until the Light Takes Us. Factory 25 (documentary; 2010).  P. Aasdal and M. Ledang (dirs.), Once Upon a Time in Norway. Grenzeløs Productions (documentary; 2007). 39  D. Hall (dir.), Blekkmetal (documentary; 2016). 40  D. Patterson, Black Metal: The Cult Never Dies, Vol. 1 (London 2015). 37 38

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normalcy, particularly when the filmmakers catch mundane moments like a middle-aged mustachioed dad dropping off a carload of corpse-painted teens. The lens eventually turns to the fans and musicians themselves, and they candidly describe their love of black metal. Black Metal’s filmmakers remain essentially invisible and let their interviewees hold forth at length without challenging them or debating them on camera, even when they espouse nationalist and racist viewpoints.41 Of course, this twenty-year-old documentary is now an artifact in its own right, even if viewers in 2018 seem to treat it as akin to the infamous 1986 cult film Heavy Metal Parking Lot.42 However, some recent personal memoirs have begun to highlight other avenues for insights into the Norwegian scene by focusing intently on the authors’ individual experiences. In particular, Jon Kristiansen’s Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries and Jørn ‘Necrobutcher’ Stubberud’s The Death Archives: Mayhem 1984–94 provide highly personal recollections of the Norwegian black metal scene and the crimes and deaths that shaped its global notoriety.43 Kristiansen was an important chronicler of the Norwegian metal scene, self-publishing his zine Slayer Mag between 1985 and 2010, and Stubberud was the original bassist in Mayhem, although he had temporarily left the band by the time of the church burnings and murders. Both books dwell particularly on the suicide of Per ‘Dead’ Ohlin, the singer of Mayhem from 1988–1991. Kristiansen and Stubberud’s books highlight the authors’ feelings of loss, regret, and survivor’s guilt, serving as counterweights to the more commercialized collective memorializations of the scene.

Research Dilemmas When I first began researching black metal music as a graduate student in the mid-2000s, there was very little in the musicological literature on metal music in general, to say nothing of more niche subcultures like black  M. Watelet (dir.), Black Metal. Paradise Films (documentary; 1998).  The comments on the YouTube page hosting the documentary generally poke fun at the corpse-painted concert goers, although some commenters express nostalgia for the seriousness of youth. Maryljan, ‘Black Metal (1998) Documentary Belgium (with ENG subtitles)’, 10 March 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mENpzyfENhQ. [Accessed on 24 September 2018]. 43  J. Kristiansen, Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries (Brooklyn, NY: Bazillion Point, 2011); J. Stubberud, The Death Archives: Mayhem 1984–94 (New York: Omnibus, 2016). 41 42

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metal. Nearly fifteen years later, the study of metal music has blossomed, resulting in an ever-growing body of academic literature and an international research society, the International Society for Metal Music Studies. Black metal music has become one of the most-researched subjects in Metal Studies, which is not particularly surprising. After all, the same ‘extreme’ qualities that made the genre noteworthy enough to attract journalists and filmmakers also appeal to academics. Black metal’s blatant evocations of regional identities, pagan religions, and traditional music styles make it an obvious subject of interest for anthropologists and ethnomusicologists especially.44 The Black Metal Theory scholars have even adopted the obscurantist ethos of the musical genre as a vehicle for esoteric philosophy and critical theory, producing a number of books and articles that are often provocatively impenetrable to non-philosophers.45 Within these endeavors, the legends and myths around Norwegian black metal create a few dilemmas that researchers have to keep in mind when approaching the genre. Although it perhaps goes without saying, the first step is to keep a critical viewpoint regarding the origin myths themselves, and to understand that black metal subcultures deploy these myths in varying and even contradictory ways. At this point, it is probably not possible to uncover a single ‘real story’ behind the much-discussed violence and extremism of the Norwegian black metal scene in the 1990s. As with all history, the ‘real story’ turns out to be multiple stories. Yet the continual restoration of this mythic past in the present, with new uses and new meanings, is one of the keys to understanding the genre’s complexities and contradictions. Its meaning and relevance continue to be subject to competing claims and desires from both participants and academics, depending on context. For the researcher, the key is perhaps to determine what purpose the myth is serving for particular people at a specific moment. For example, glorifying the violence and extremism that Vikernes and Aarseth cultivated remains a provocative stance for black metallers around the world, both in terms of offending the sensibilities of those outside (and some within) the scene and shoring up a sense of group identity, even if many of the scene’s Norwegian elders find such posturing more than a 44  R. Hagen, ‘Ideology and Mythology in Norwegian Black Metal’ in I. von Helden (ed.), Norwegian Native Art: Cultural Identity in Norwegian Metal Music (Zurich: Lit, 2017). 45  Masciandaro, Hideous Gnosis; S.  Wilson, Melancology: Black Metal Theory and Ecology (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2013); E.  Connole and N.  Masciandaro, Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory (Milan: Mimesis International, 2015).

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little overblown. Indeed, this aspect of black metal’s mythology likely carries more weight outside of Europe, where geographic and cultural distance can magnify these legendary qualities. On the other hand, the myth even has value as a foil of sorts for those who are more dismissive toward it because it gives those fans and bands something to declare their independence from. In both cases, the myth retains its sense of subcultural gravity, as if it were a dark sun that all global black metal scenes orbit. For academics, navigating the uses of black metal’s violent past is a complex endeavor. In particular, researchers should cultivate connections within black metal scenes, in the spirit of participant-observation that has informed ethnographic and ethnomusicological studies for several generations. These sorts of connections can serve as an inoculation against the power of black metal’s mythology by providing a window into the more prosaic activities of black metallers. And indeed, most academics who write about black metal also participate in metal scenes as fans, performers, photographers, or journalists, and the lines between these roles are rarely clear-cut. At the same time, researchers must be reflexive and self-critical about their own positions in music scenes and the acquaintances and friendships they build within them. The ongoing extremist threads within black metal music make this need for reflexivity explicit, both as a way for researchers to deal with cultural expressions that may conflict with their own worldviews and as a means to make those fault lines clear to the reader.46 Academic metal researchers must also acknowledge that the ­experiences and norms of academia have bequeathed to them a view of the world that often diverges significantly from that of non-academic metalheads.47 This difference is not merely political, but penetrates into the experience of the music and the mythology. The legitimation of black metal through academic inquiry could also work alongside the forces of commercialism as a domesticating force, subjecting black metal to the norms and values of academia.

46  B. Teitelbaum, Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) provides an evocative example of ethnography in this vein. This potential political tension between subject and researcher may account at least in part for the popularity of American black metal bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Panopticon as research subjects, as these bands eschew right-wing nationalism in favor of environmentalism and more progressive ideals. 47  A.  Brown, ‘A Manifesto for Metal Studies: Or Putting the “Politics of Metal” in its Place’, Metal Music Studies vol. 4 (2018) no. 2, 343–363.

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Yet the continual presence of black metal’s violent origin mythology perhaps ensures that the style will never be fully made docile and ‘safe’ no matter its level of cultural legitimation and acceptance. Although black metal has been commercialized and sold in a growing variety of diffuse forms around the world, it can continually return to the well of its murky underground origins and reblacken itself. Even as the tales of Norwegian black metal’s violent crucible are put to a number of sometimes contradictory uses in the twenty-first century, they remain a key part of the scene’s subcultural rhetoric and the experience of ‘being’ black metal. As such, this part of its past continues to haunt this musical style, inspiring a wide variety of commercial endeavors, postmodern artworks, dedicated underground scenes, and academic inquiries around the world.

CHAPTER 9

Between Revolution and the Market: Bob Marley and the Cultural Politics of the Youth Icon Jeremy Prestholdt

The world has seen a significant increase in the number and diversity of iconic figures since the 1950s.1 Much like earlier icons, Cold War and post-Cold War figures have condensed movements and historical moments in evocative yet malleable myth-like residues of popular memory. Moreover, 1  See, for example, S.J. Drucker and R.S. Cathcart (eds.), American Heroes in a Media Age (Cresskill, NJ Hampton, 1994); S. Brunk and B. Fallaw (eds.), Heroes and Hero Cults in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); D. Herwitz, The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); S.J. Drucker and G.  Gumpert (eds.), Heroes in a Global World (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2008); B.  Feldges, American Icons: The Genesis of a National Visual Language (New York: Routledge, 2008); K.G. Tomaselli and D.H.T. Scott (eds.), Cultural Icons (Walnut Creek, CA: Routledge, 2009); J.C.  Alexander, ‘The Celebrity-Icon’, Journal of Sociology vol. 4 (2010) no. 3, 323–36; J.D.  Ebert, Dead Celebrities, Living Icons: Tragedy and Fame in the Age of the Multimedia Superstar (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010); D.C. Niebylski and P. O’Connor (eds.), Latin American Icons: Fame Across Borders (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014).

J. Prestholdt (*) University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_9

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many of these figures, from Mao Zedong to Sid Vicious, have been integral to individual self-definition, youth subcultures, or social movements. In this way, iconic figures offer valuable windows on collective imaginations and interests and so help us to understand how diverse audiences both make sense of the world and attempt to affect contemporaneous circumstances. Yet, questions of why icons appeal to multiple subcultures or movements, how they become points of linkage among audiences, and how interpretations of them evolve have not received adequate attention. This chapter explores changing cumulative interpretations of subcultural icons. In a broad sense, it is an analysis of how the perception and historical memory of iconic figures shifts as a result of the confluence of numerous factors, including their embrace by diverse social movements, their circulation in mass culture, patterns of interpretive consensus, and mass marketing. More precisely, by tracing interpretations of the reggae artist Robert Nesta ‘Bob’ Marley over time, this chapter demonstrates how the analysis of iconic resonance can offer a window on myth-making processes across marketing strategies and multiple social boundaries. The chapter also highlights the trajectory of a figure whose popularity would dramatically eclipse his early subcultural audiences. More precisely, in this chapter I ask how Bob Marley, a figure that represented a relatively obscure Caribbean subculture and a fledgling musical genre at the beginning of the 1970s, became a globally recognized voice for liberation politics at the end of the decade and ultimately a suprareligious lodestar with a myth-like aura and more ambiguous connotations. Drawing on evidence from North America, Western Europe, the Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa, I show how marketing, varied perceptions, and revisionist interpretations of Marley’s canon incrementally transformed his image both during and after the Cold War era. By taking this tack, the chapter sheds new light on the appeal of an iconic figure across subcultures and the transnational cultural politics of iconography and memory that have defined youth icons since the late Cold War era.

Introduction: Bob Marley’s Global Resonance Global icons are culturally important because they seem to speak to specific local or personal circumstances and simultaneously link these to wider movements or transnational currents. This concurrent universality and specificity makes certain iconic figures relevant to diverse subcultures,

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marginalized groups, and larger audiences.2 By referencing icons, individuals place themselves within a larger, often transnational collective. Indeed, the recognition, appreciation, and mutual citation of iconic messengers are in many instances just as important as their messages.3 To fully appreciate the appeal of subcultural icons, we must understand not only their variegated local meanings but also how and why perceptions of them change over time. This, in turn, can reveal much about the transformation of collective perceptions and broader understandings of the present. The iconic history of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara is instructive in this regard. Since the 1960s the image of Che Guevara has connoted both anti-establishment ideals and a general rebellious attitude.4 Specifically, in the 1960s and 1970s, the particular meaning of rebellion associated with Guevara varied across audiences, from general anti-Vietnam War sentiment to revolutionary internationalism. In the past several decades, however, we can see greater variance in popular interpretations of Che.5 In the post-Cold War era, Guevara remained a metonym for rebelliousness, and he was once again associated with anti-war sentiment. But he was far less frequently associated with either militancy or socialism. Instead, anti-­ political and even apolitical connotations dominated popular perceptions of Guevara, both of which were affected by the commercialization of his image.6 Che Guevara’s iconic trajectory, much like that of Bob Marley, highlights the malleability of icons as well as their ability to maintain general 2  B. Ghosh, Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); J. Prestholdt, Icons of Dissent: The Global Resonance of Che, Marley, Tupac, and Bin Laden (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2019). 3  W. Binder, ‘The Emergence of Iconic Depth: Secular Icons in a Comparative Perspective’ in J.C.  Alexander, D.  Bartmański, and B.  Giesen (eds.), Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 113. 4  H. Charlton, ‘Introduction’ in T. Ziff (ed.) Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon (New York: Abrams Press, 2006), 7–14. 5  J.  Prestholdt, ‘Resurrecting Che: Radicalism, the Transnational Imagination and the Politics of Heroes’, Journal of Global History vol. 7 (2012) no. 3, 506–526. 6  D.  Kunzle (ed.), Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1997); Ziff, Che Guevara; M. Casey, Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image (New York 2009); O. Besancenot and M. Löwy, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy (New York: Vintage Books, 2013); P. Raman, ‘Signifying Something: Che Guevara and Neoliberal Alienation in London’ in H.G. West and P. Raman (eds.), Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation (New York: Berghahn, 2009); M.-C. Cambre, The Semiotics of Che Guevara: Affective Gateways (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015); Prestholdt, Icons of Dissent.

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connotations. This capacity to act as vessels of both shared and divergent meaning gives iconic figures their broad appeal. It can also contribute to their remarkable longevity. One of the most important conclusions we can draw from the study of icons is that while their particular messages or ideological positions contribute to their initial resonance, most obtain far greater notoriety as they are abstracted from those messages or ideologies. As I will demonstrate in the case of Bob Marley, reduction to a finite number of attributes, stereotypical gender roles, and even a single mantra invariably does violence to the complexity, beliefs, and frailties of the actual individual.7 Yet, this selective interpretation of historical figures ensures their appeal well beyond their initial subcultural audiences and others who share their convictions. Bob Marley, Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi, and many others resonated most widely when their messages were stripped of nuance and historical context and their images were assigned less complicated, general connotations. In short, iconic figures such as Marley tend to transcend their subcultural audiences and gain ever-greater appeal as they are distilled into essences of general sentiment or common values. Since the 1970s Bob Marley has acted as a shared reference, and in some cases a powerful link, among audiences. And since his death at the height of his career in 1981, his iconicity has been significantly reshaped by shifting collective interpretations of him, including by those that sought to harness his commercial value and the moral force of his message. Much has been written about Bob Marley’s music and the internationalization of reggae. Yet, the complex history of Marley’s phenomenal rise in popularity among multiple subcultures and movements across the globe as well as changing collective interpretations of his music remains largely unexplored.8 This is remarkable given the fact that in the years after his death Bob Marley became not only a global figure but also one of  the most recognizable popular icons of the postcolonial world.9

7  On this process of reduction see D.  Bartmański and J.C.  Alexander, ‘Introduction: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology’, in Alexander, Bartmański, and Giesen, Iconic Power, 2. 8  A notable exception to this is R. Steffens, ‘Forward: Bob Marley: Artist of the Century’, and ‘Bob Marley: Cultural Icon’, in H. Bordowitz (ed.), Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004). Steffens astutely described Bob Marley as a ‘rebel for all reasons’. R. Steffens, ‘Bob Marley: Cultural Icon’, xx. 9  P. Gilroy, Darker than Blue: On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

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Marley, in fact, resonated on a deeper level than most popular artists. ‘To the “downpressed” of the third world’, the New York Times Magazine recognized as early as 1977, ‘Bob Marley is a hero’.10 Marley’s articulation of the experiences and struggles of the Jamaican underclass—Rastafarians in particular—became a clarion call for political, social, and cultural liberation among those who had little knowledge of Jamaica or Marley’s Rastafari beliefs.11 For instance, in 1989 when young East and West Berliners dismantled the wall that had come to symbolize the divisions of Cold War Europe, those who congregated on both sides sang Bob Marley’s songs.12 Similarly, Marley’s music was a symbol of the reformist, student-­ led protest movement in late 1980s China. At the height of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, protestors chanted the Bob Marley-Peter Tosh anthem, ‘Get Up Stand Up, Stand Up’ and carried posters bearing Marley’s image.13 To understand how Bob Marley became a potent symbol for social equality and resistance to the status quo, often among unrelated individuals, subcultures, and movements, we must appreciate his image, message, and music as well as how audiences interpreted each. First, Marley was a charismatic performer and gifted songwriter who packaged his message in a powerful emerging art form. He also became a general symbol of a youthful, rebellious spirit. For some fans, Marley’s long hair, beard, and cannabis use signified rebelliousness. Marley also gained popularity as a critic of imperialism and inequality, and he  offered an authentic, anti-­ establishment voice of the ‘Third World’. Bob Marley’s medium was the essential element of his global popularity. In the late Cold War era popular music became a critical factor in the creation of collective identities and common references. For Marley, the music industry, whose global influence was growing rapidly in the early 10   J.  Bradshaw, ‘The Reggae Way to “Salvation”’, New York Times Magazine, 14 August 1977. 11  Bob Marley’s refrain of universal liberation drew on a much longer tradition, one traceable to the Age of Revolution. See M. West and W. Martin, ‘Introduction: Contours of the Black International’, in: M.O. West, W.G. Martin, and F.C. Wilkins (eds.), From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 5, and B.G. Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the era of decolonization, 1956–1974 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 12  R. Nettleford, ‘Greetings on behalf of the University of the West Indies’, in: E. Wint and C. Cooper (eds.), Bob Marley: The Man and his Music (Kingston: Arawak, 1995), xiv–xv. 13  C.  Sampson, ‘Nothing But a Revolution’, The Times, 18 May 1989; L.  Williams, ‘Americans Sense a New Patriotism’, New York Times, 4 July 1990.

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1970s, was an ideal platform for the dissemination of his message. In the late 1960s reggae emerged as a distinct art form that spoke both of and to the experience of the postcolonial Jamaican underclass. Its lexicon and aesthetic were rooted in the rejection of elite social norms, and thus among fans and critics reggae was inherently subversive. Reggae offered an alternative political and cultural discourse for young West Indians, and by the mid-1970s it also began attracting audiences well beyond the region, notably among young people of West Indian descent in the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. Bob Marley’s brand of roots reggae shared many musical elements with other popular Jamaican groups of the era, yet the finely wrought lyrics of his ‘message songs’ often had a distinct air of universality. As Kwame Dawes succinctly explained, Marley’s lyrics were ‘rich with metaphor, thick with allusions, elevated by biblical references and fired by passion and energy’.14 Bob Marley’s ‘message songs’ contributed significantly to his early resonance within and beyond Jamaica. His worldview was rooted in a refusal of the dominant culture of politics and the radical left’s vision global socialist revolution. Specifically, Marley emphasized ethics over political ideology and so eschewed conventional politics and the factional debates that divided the contemporaneous left. This attracted admirers disillusioned by mainstream politics. Marley embraced more introspective concepts of self-reform that spoke directly to an emergent spiritualist turn, or the increasing concern with self-transformation and redemption among many on the left in the 1980s. Thus, he both reflected and amplified a wider shift in political sensibilities. Marley’s message aligned neatly with a youthful anti-politics that the British-South African singer Johnny Clegg described as a yearning for a ‘moral force’ apart from conventional political dogma.15 By developing an alternative language with strong spiritual overtones to articulate dissent, rebelliousness, and ethics, Bob Marley spoke directly to this emphasis on morality. While Marley chose not to align with particular political organizations or philosophies, his message refracted the self-corrective tenets of Rastafari, revolutionary socialism, the Black Power movement, and the New Left.16  K. Dawes, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (London 2002), 187–8.  D. Snowden, ‘Marley’s Ghost’, Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1988. 16  On the Black Power movement in Jamaica and its influence on reggae see J. Bradford, ‘Brother Wally and De Burnin’ of Babylon: Walter Rodney’s Impact on the Reawakening of Black Power, the Birth of Reggae, and Resistance to Global Imperialism’ in S. Christiansen 14 15

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He repeated North American Black Power themes of resistance and empowerment, and he appropriated more general phrases of the left, including the refrain ‘make love and not war’ (‘No More Trouble’ 1973). Marley echoed many of the anti-establishment sentiments of the contemporary left but unlike other political icons of the 1970s, he spoke truth to power in a language free of the ideological baggage of Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, or any other another socialist paradigm.17 Just as important, the polyvalence of Marley’s message, or the fact that it was open to multiple meanings, allowed it to be incorporated into various social environments and movements. Marley often delivered his messages in parable so layered that diverse audiences could interpret them in various ways. While his songs frequently referenced circumstances in Jamaica and Marley’s personal life, his lyrics were also rich with allegory and allusion, which allowed for other meanings to be grafted onto them.18 In this way, Marley’s lyrics became anthems for diverse movements and subcultures. The track ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ (1973), co-written by Peter Tosh, exemplifies this point. ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ was Bob Marley’s best-known refrain in the latter years of his life. It was often the final song he performed in concert, in part because audiences embraced it as a universal anthem for social justice and political reform. Indeed, no other Marley track resonated as widely within contemporaneous youth culture as did ‘Get Up, Stand Up’. However, ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ was conceived with a relatively narrow theme for a specific audience: fellow Rastafarians. The lyrics were not a general charge to rise up against all oppressive forces. Rather, they were a Rasta critique of Jamaica’s dominant Christian culture. The song’s lyrics highlight the denigration of the Rastafari community by mainstream society and the necessity of Rastas to take a stand against their oppression. Most of Marley’s listeners, however, largely ignored—or perhaps were not aware of—the song’s emphasis on Rastafari beliefs. Instead, most listeners interpreted ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ as a general affirmation of both individual and common rights. As American rock critic Robert Hilburn explained in the late 1970s, a poor and Z.A.  Scarlett (eds.), The Third World in the Global 1960s (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 142–56. 17  M. Witter, ‘Soul Rebel: Bob Marley and the Caribbean Revolution’, The Beat vol. 13 (1992) no. 3, 38. 18  Toynbee, Bob Marley, 220; B. Hagerman, ‘Everywhere Is War: Peace and Violence in the Life and Songs of Bob Marley’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture vol. 24 (2012) no. 3, 380–392.

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understanding of Rastafari tenets allowed Marley’s audiences ‘to sidestep the specifics’ of Marley’s lyrics and identify with Marley’s ‘sincerity’ and ‘freedom-oriented stance’.19 Reggae was so strongly influenced by the Rastafari subculture that the two often seemed synonymous. Unlike most mainstream religions, Rastafari is not dogmatic. It emphasizes tenets such as self-empowerment, Afrocentrism, and a rejection of imperialism, the Western capitalist system, and ‘Babylon’ generally. In Rastafari thought, Babylon refers to the modern world and its attendant destructive social forces: greed, envy, desires for power and control as well as the general promotion of sociocultural mores that denigrate people of African descent.20 As Ennis B. Edmonds has suggested, the Rasta critique of the Babylon system echoed neo-­ Marxist analyses of capitalism as a drive to maximize profits without regard to its consequences. Rastas also saw the Soviet Union and the Catholic Church as components of the Babylon system.21 By joining liberation discourse with Judeo-Christian thought, Rastafari tenets echoed many threads of contemporary liberation theology, particularly that in Latin America and southern Africa.22 Rastafari beliefs also drew on the history of Pan-Africanism and Garveyism, adding, in the 1960s and 1970s, elements of contemporary black liberation rhetoric to this intellectual amalgam. The Rastafari faithful emphasized African and African diaspora solidarity, and they placed great emphasis on Africa as a spiritual and metaphysical homeland for all people of African descent. Rastas overlaid this intellectual superstructure with the revelation that Haile Selassie I (1892–1975), Emperor of Ethiopia, was the messiah. Therefore, they championed the red, gold, and green of the Ethiopian flag and idealized Ethiopia as a spiritual and figurative Zion. Rastas developed a distinctive cultural style as well. They grew beards, dreadlocks, and embraced cannabis, or ganja, as religious sacrament. Ganja, they asserted, had the capacity to heighten individual and 19  R. Hilburn, ‘Marley Sends his Message Through Special Delivery’, Los Angeles Times, 27 November 1979. 20  S.V. Davidson, ‘Leave Babylon: The Trope of Babylon in Rastafarian Discourse’, Black Theology no. 6 (2008) no. 1, 46–60. 21   E.B.  Edmonds, ‘Dread “I” In-a-Babylon: Ideological Resistance and Cultural Revitalization’ in N.S. Murrell, W.D. Spencer, and A.A. McFarlane (eds.), Chanting Down Babylon: the Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 27, 24–5. 22  P. Walshe, ‘The Evolution of Liberation Theology in South Africa’, Journal of Law and Religion vol. 5 (1987) no. 2, 299–311.

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communal consciousness. As a defiant, politically conscious subculture of the underclass, in the 1960s Caribbean Rastas were widely perceived as dangerous and often treated as criminals.23 Negative stereotypes of Rastafari and reggae fans also influenced the way that many beyond the Caribbean viewed Rastas and Bob Marley, specifically. For example, after several concerts in the United Kingdom in 1976, the Sunday Times wondered if Bob Marley might represent an ‘extremist cult that could incite violence’.24 This profound misunderstanding of Rastafari tenets would plague Marley throughout his career. Bob Marley became a practicing Rasta as early as 1966. Like other Jamaican musicians of the 1960s he adapted Rasta critiques and philosophy to reggae music. By the 1970s Marley not only strongly identified with the Rasta subculture but he also saw himself as a proselytizer through music. From the mid-1970s Marley would, in effect, be a primary force in Rastafari’s internationalization.25 Rarely has a musical genre been as central to the propagation of a religion as reggae was to the spread of Rastafari.26 And perhaps never has a single musician been so influential in the spreading of a faith and its aesthetics. Yet, as I suggested above, confusion about the meaning of Rastafari among many listeners ensured that Marley’s message was never narrowly defined. Since Marley’s message did not fit neatly into the canon of any world religion, fans tended to focus their attention on his conviction rather than the minutia of Rastafari dogma.27 Marley’s strong association with a belief system and subculture that few understood thereby allowed for the transcendence of his music. Thus, Marley became synonymous not only with reggae as an emerging art form related to Rastafari, and later other subcultures, but also liberation as an

23  E.  Brodber, ‘Black Consciousness and Popular Music in Jamaica in the 1960s and 1970s’, Caribbean Quarterly vol. 31 (1985) no. 2, 53–66; Price, ‘Political and Radical Aspects of the Rastafarian Movement’. 24  D. Jewell, ‘Reggae for Revolution’, Sunday Times, 20 June 1976. 25  G. Stephens, On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 191. 26  N.J. Savishinsky, ‘Transnational Popular Culture and the Global Spread of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement’, New West Indian Guide vol. 8 (1994) no. 3–4, 260; D. MacNeil, The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told (Eugene, OR.: Cascade Books 2013). See also, M.  Sterling, Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae, and Rastafari in Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). 27  Dawes, Bob Marley.

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overarching concept of self-determination, Third World liberation in particular.28 The aesthetics, ease of replication, and intrinsic politicality of Bob Marley’s music allowed Marley to bridge the worlds of art, consumer culture, and politics. Just as remarkably, he revitalized and reformed symbolic linkages between the West and the global South. Writing for the New York Times, John Rockwell emphasized Marley’s unique capacity to reach across this socioeconomic divide. Reflecting on Marley’s performance of the song ‘War’ during his 1978 American tour, Rockwell asked: ‘Who would have believed that Madison Square Garden would have swayed en masse to a speech by Haile Selassie …?’29 By attracting fans across the global South as well as the West, Marley represented a profound culmination of Third Worldism. As a powerful symbol of the ‘social idealism’ of rock music, by the end of the 1970s Bob Marley’s words would become international anthems of human rights, a soundtrack and inspiration for myriad political, social, cultural, and spiritual movements across the globe.30

Bob Marley, Reggae, and Dissent In the early 1960s, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer formed a group called The Wailers. The group had multiple hits in Jamaica, but their prospects for international success rose significantly after signing with the British label Island Records. After receiving an advance from the record company, the band recorded many tracks for their first full-length album, Catch a Fire (1973). The record proved a watershed. Producer Chris Blackwell hoped to build on the rebellious spirit of the popular Jamaican film, The Harder They Come (1972), and therefore selected tracks from the Wailers’ recordings that were militant and defiant. The album addressed the history of slavery and contemporary racial oppression, and it cited common refrains of Pan-Africanism and other forms of black internationalism. Catch a Fire was so politically charged and compelling that Henderson Dalrymple, writing in the mid-1970s, believed that it 28  E. Kwayana, ‘Preface’ in H Campbell (ed.), Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney (Trenton, NJ. 1987); Stephens, On Racial Frontiers, 214; ‘Voices: Bob Marley’s Worldwide Impact’, The Beat vol. 14 (1995) no. 3, 59. 29  J. Rockwell, ‘Reggae: Bob Marley’, New York Times, 19 June 1978. 30  D. Snowden, ‘Marley’s Ghost’, Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1988.

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had the power to ‘kindle the consciousness of thousands upon thousands of black brothers all over the world’.31 Island Record’s marketing strategies would also prove critical to Marley’s broad resonance. Chris Blackwell aimed to market the Wailers as a ‘black rock band’. To this end he blurred the lines between reggae, soul, and rock by augmenting The Wailers’ tracks with rock riffs as well as other elements unusual for contemporaneous reggae. In a further attempt to develop a rebellious image for the group, the Catch A Fire record sleeve featured a photograph of Marley shirtless and smoking a large spliff (joint). The message of the album was clear to anyone: The Wailers were rebels. Island Records calculated that images of Marley, who became the frontman of the group, with long hair, beard, and wearing denim would cement his rebellious image and draw Western audiences.32 The Wailers’ second album with Island Records, Burnin’ (1973), likewise addressed social justice themes, including poverty and inequality. The album included the popular and enduring track ‘Get Up, Stand Up’. Neither Catch a Fire nor Burnin’ were great successes on the European or American charts, but they created an uncompromisingly rebellious and politically conscious image for the group, and they captured the imagination of young West Indian audiences among others in Western Europe. Both Rastafari and reggae appealed to working-class people of West Indian descent as they represented an alternative set of cultural, political, and moral values.33 As Paul Gilroy and Simon Jones have argued, the politically conscious themes of The Wailers’ early albums resonated strongly among young UK Afro-Caribbean listeners. Young people of West Indian descent were searching for a political language and style that could speak to a common sense of marginality and alienation, and both Rastafari and Marley’s music offered this.34 For instance, the track ‘Concrete Jungle’ reflects on contemporary urban poverty while acknowledging a deeper history of oppression. For young people of Caribbean descent in the UK, France, Holland, and elsewhere, Marley’s music spoke 31  H.  Dalrymple, Bob Marley: Music, Myth & the Rastas (Sudbury, UK.: Carib-Arawak, 1976), 30. 32  C. Blackwell, ‘Bob Marley: Absolutely, Truly Natural’, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas vol. 43 (2010) no. 2, 152–3. 33  See also R.L. Hepner, ‘Chanting Down Babylon in the Belly of the Beast: The Rastafarian Movement in the Metropolitan United States’ in Chanting Down Babylon, 199–2015. 34  S. Jones, Black Culture, White Youth: The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK (London: Macmillan 1988), 42; Gilroy, Darker than Blue, 112.

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to broader concerns of social justice as well as the more particular historical experiences of slavery and racial oppression. Thus, Bob Marley and reggae generally offered a voice for people of African descent as well as a defiant new cultural style and lexicon.35 Marley’s next album, Natty Dread (1974), gained a larger audience that included the coveted North American market. Marley had not altered his anti-establishment message to gain new listeners. Tracks such as ‘Rebel Music (Three O’clock Road Block)’, ‘Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)’, and ‘Talkin’ Blues’ spoke to the repressive practices of the postcolonial state, inequality, and resistance. Marley’s final studio albums attracted even larger audiences. His 1977 release Exodus enjoyed considerable commercial success and raised Marley beyond the subcultural figure that he had been for much of his career. The title track ‘Exodus’, which developed a liberation message through its overtly biblical trope, reached the top position on the Jamaican, British, and German charts. Marley’s music, and reggae generally, also filled a political void in the music scene. Rock gained a strong critical edge in the 1960s, but by the middle of the 1970s it had become largely apolitical and the famous excesses of contemporary rock outfits typified its increasing nihilism. Thus, it would be through Bob Marley’s music that ‘a generation of white rock-­ fans’, according to Simon Jones, ‘rediscovered the oppositional values which so much contemporary rock music appeared to have lost’.36 For example, in the 1970s and into the 1980s, Marley’s popularity among white, working-class youth in the UK grew from the ska and punk rock subcultural scenes. Within the 1970s anti-establishment punk movement, reggae was influential and inspirational.37 In 1976, for instance, Dubliner and future frontman of the rock group U2, Bono discovered Bob Marley as a result of his interest in punk. When the teenage Bono first heard Marley he ‘not only felt [Marley’s music]’, he recalled, ‘I felt I understood

 D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979).  Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 94–5. 37  Hebdige, Subculture. Music critic John Rockwell recorded that during his time with the Sex Pistols in the late 1970s the group listened exclusively to reggae between shows. J. Rockwell, ‘They Flavor their Rock with Reggae’, New York Times, 11 November 1979. By 1981 punk bands in Eastern Europe had similarly embraced Marley. For instance, the Gdansk outfit Tilt incorporated ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ into their live performances. Andrzej Jakubowicz, ‘Dread inna Polan’, The Beat vol. 3(1984) no. 2, 9–10. 35 36

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it’.38 Like many other listeners, Bono connected with Marley in intuitive ways. This synergy between the anti-establishment sentiments of young, largely working-class whites and blacks led to an effervescence of artistic cross-fertilization. Bob Marley both acknowledged and encouraged this crossover with his 1977 single, ‘Punky Reggae Party’. As early as 1978, promoters in the UK began pairing reggae and punk acts in a series of concerts dubbed Rock Against Racism. By the early 1980s, many young whites in the UK saw Bob Marley as a political thinker of ‘heroic proportions’. This was in part because young, white Britons read Marley’s critiques as not only rooted in a critique of racism  but also speaking to British systems of class.39 Simon Jones conducted extensive interviews of UK listeners in the 1980s and discovered that white fans celebrated Bob Marley as an artist who communicated universal messages, offered a grammar of social critique, and ‘spoke for everybody’. One of Jones’ white informants explained his interpretation of Marley’s lyrics in this way: I could relate very strongly to ‘sufferation’ and ‘sufferers’ music even though I wasn’t black […] you know, ‘stop pushing me Mr. Boss Man’ […] And the ones about freedom too. ‘Cos I hated school, I felt I was captive by school, and by people in authority.40

Such liberal interpretations of Marley’s social critique cemented Marley’s songs as a cornerstone of working-class white British counterculture in 1970s and 1980s.41 In the US, Marley similarly developed a fan base that initially drew on reggae enthusiasts and punk devotees.42 Much as in the UK, the intersections of punk, ska, and reggae subcultures heightened Marley’s appeal

38  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, ‘Bono Inducts Bob Marley into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’, 12 December 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Hb5qM4ldg (accessed: 10 January 2014). 39  Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 161 and passim; Toynbee, Bob Marley, 218. 40  Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 161–2. 41  Jones suggested that even groups on the far right incorporated Marley’s words into their political rhetoric. Ibid., 101–2; Hebdige, Subculture. 42  H. Campbell, ‘Rastafari as Pan Africanism in the Caribbean and Africa’, African Journal of Political Economy vol. 2 (1988) no. 1, 75–88; A.M.  Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols: Rastafari and Reggae in Jamaican Politics (New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction, 1985), 187–8.

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among young listeners.43 For instance, members of the pioneering and influential punk-reggae outfit Bad Brains attended a Marley concert in 1980 that inspired them to embrace Rastafari and modify their message to reflect Rasta tenets.44 Moreover, by the early 1980s Marley would become an important political reference for many on the left, particularly within the anti-Apartheid and anti-nuclear movements as well as among young political thinkers and artists. For instance, acclaimed author Alice Walker memorialized Marley, writing that in him she saw ‘the radical peasant-­ class, working-class consciousness that fearlessly denounced the wasichu (the greedy and destructive)’.45 Between early 1979 and the spring of 1980 Marley recorded what would be the final records to appear during his life: Survival (1979) and Uprising (1980). Both albums featured anthems of the meek standing against dominant powers.46 Yet, in late 1980, at the height of his career, Bob Marley was diagnosed with cancer. The melanoma quickly spread from his toe to his lungs and ultimately to his brain. Marley continued to tour. Zurich was the first European date on the Uprising tour, which would be Marley’s last tour. The Zurich concert would also be linked in memory to a youth uprising popularly known as the Opera House riots (Opernhauskrawalle). Marley had never played Zurich, but the capacity crowd in May 1980 was indicative of what the band would see throughout the tour. Marley and the Wailers gave an impassioned performance ending with ‘Get Up, Stand Up’, a tune the concertgoers knew well. Marley exited the stage with a resounding, ‘Don’t give up the fight. Cuz I never give up!’ On the street, a demonstration at the city’s historic Opera House was beginning to spiral out of control. Leftist students and young workers, invigorated in part by Zurich’s increasingly defiant punk countercultural scene, had been pushing for greater public funding for alternative cultural expression.47 Specifically, activists demanded autonomous centers for alternative arts, a ‘sovereign space of difference’ in Francesca Polletta’s

43  K. Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s’, American Studies vol. 42 (2001) no. 1, 69–97. 44  M. Stein and B. Logan (dir.) Bad Brains: A Band in DC. Plain Jane Productions (streaming video; 2012). 45  A. Walker, ‘Redemption Day’, Mother Jones, December 1986. 46  Dawes, Bob Marley, 249; Don Snowden, ‘Marley: A Matter of ‘Survival”, Los Angeles Times, 11 November 1979. 47  P. Hofmann, ‘The Swiss Malaise’, New York Times, 8 February 1981.

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words. They also eschewed any clear political agenda: ‘No power to nobody’ some would chant.48 The city of Zurich’s priorities were different. Just before Marley’s concert, Zurich’s city council announced a multi-million franc loan for the renovation of the historic Opera House. At the same time, they voted down a measure to fund a youth arts space. As Marley’s concert ended, concertgoers, enraged by the city’s decision, joined demonstrators at the Opera House. When the police responded with force, the demonstration became a riot. In the following months, police and youth battled in Zurich’s streets and the protests spread to other Swiss cities. ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ would become part of the soundtrack for this period of recurring clashes known as ‘Zurich Burns’.49 Some young people interpreted the uprising as actively bridging countercultural youth angst in Switzerland and global anti-establishment sentiment. One Zuricher recalled that he was able to ‘link what happened in Zurich with the Third World and Bob Marley’. In the riots he ‘saw that there were people [in Switzerland] unhappy with some things and wanted to change them’. He concluded that through the protests Zurich ‘became part of the rest of the world’.50 Marley’s performance did not cause the Zurich Burns uprising, but its uncanny timing and his emotive message helped to propel simmering youth discontent into outright rebellion and offer a conceptual link across global space. As a result, Bob Marley’s presence at the beginning of the uprising looms large in public memory of the events.

Bob Marley’s Many Afterlives Bob Marley succumbed to cancer in 1981. The years immediately before and following his death saw a dramatic surge in interest in his music and message, accelerated by his association with particular political aspirations, the increasing popularity of reggae, and new strategies for marketing his image. In the South Pacific region, Bob Marley and reggae gained a large 48  F. Polletta, ‘Politicizing Childhood: The 1980 Zurich Burns Movement’, Social Text vol. 33 (1992), 82–102, 83, 92. 49  ‘Der Sänger, der zum Heiligen wurde Bob Marley, der bekannteste Musiker der Dritten Welt, lebte für seine Musik und in seinen Widersprüchen’, Tages-Anzeiger, 8 May 2012. 50  Quoted in H.  Nigg, ‘Violence and Symbolic Resistance in the Youth Unrest of the Eighties’ in S. Gau and K. Schlieben (eds.), Spektakel, Lustprinzin oder das Karnivaleske? Ein Reader über Möglichkeiten, Differenzerfahrungen und Strategien des Karnevalesken in kultureller/politischer Praxis (Berlin 2008), 141–166, 153.

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audience in the 1980s. Marley’s rise to iconic status there coincided with the emergence of indigenous movements inspired by notions of a global black experience. More precisely, Marley’s core message of liberation resonated with many cultural and sovereignty activists.51 In Australia and New Zealand, for example, Marley was an international reference and inspiration within emergent social movements addressing the rights of indigenous people.52 In the 1970s, identification as black had become an evocative political claim in Australia that linked the struggle of Aboriginal peoples with Third World liberation discourse.53 Bob Marley’s message of black empowerment, self-direction, and self-realization therefore found enthusiastic support among Australia’s indigenous minority. Aboriginal bands such as No Fixed Address and Mixed Relations domesticated reggae, and Bob Marley’s emancipatory politics generally, by framing Aboriginal Australians’ experiences within the context of global black liberation.54 For example, Bart Willoughby, drummer and guitarist for the pioneering Australian reggae group No Fixed Address, credited Bob Marley as an important role model, both because of the power of his music and his emphasis on black pride.55 For Willoughby, Bob Marley’s revolutionary fusion of Black Power politics and music ‘changed everything’.56 As in the UK and the US, Marley’s influence on Australian Aboriginal musicians also transcended reggae. For instance, Mandawuy Yunupingu, lead singer of the Aboriginal rock band Yothu Yindi, explained that Marley’s ‘freedom themes’ greatly influenced his songwriting.57 51  G. Okihiro, ‘Afterward: Toward a Black Pacific’ in H. Raphael-Hernandez and S. Steen (eds.), AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics (New York: New  York University Press, 2006), 313–330, 325; quoting Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui, ‘Yo, Brah, It’s Hip Hop Jawaiian Style: The Influence of Reggae and Rap on Contemporary Hawaiian Music’, Hawaii Review vol. 56 (2001), 153. 52  Journalist and author Colin Campbell surmised that by the late 1970s Bob Marley was likely the most recognized ‘contemporary folk hero’. ‘Reggae Rebels’, 60  Minutes (Australia) 1979. 53  West and Martin, ‘Introduction: Contours of the Black International’, 37. See also A.L.  Trometter, ‘Malcolm X and the Aboriginal Black Power Movement in Australia, 1967–1972’, The Journal of African American History vol. 100 (2015) no. 2, 226–249. 54  Toynbee, Bob Marley, 216–17; J.  Castles, ‘Tjungaringanyi: Aboriginal Rock’, in: P. Hayward (ed.), From Pop to Punk to Postmodernism: Popular Music and Australian Culture from the 1960s to the 1990s (Sydney 1992), [30]. See also Okihiro, ‘Afterward’, 313–30. 55  Clough, ‘Jamming Down Under’, 30. 56  M. Flanagan, ‘A Legend of the Land’, The Age (Australia), 15 November 2008. 57  Refining his point, Yunupingu noted that ‘[s]ome of the things I feel about my life, our country’ were similar to those ‘Marley would have felt’. Quoted in T. White, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley (New York: Omnibus 2000), 414.

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Marley proved a critical bridge connecting the cultural politics of a new generation of Aboriginal artists and activists with liberation struggles as well as reggae enthusiasts around the world. Bob Marley’s message, and that of reggae generally, likewise accorded with New Zealand’s Black Power movement. As in Western Europe and North America, most New Zealanders were introduced to reggae through Marley. Indeed,  Marley’s visits to Australia and New Zealand in 1979 while promoting the album Survival drew substantial crowds that included a cross-section of young people. Reggae’s message of liberation resonated strongly with indigenous rights activists. Among Maori listeners seeking to reclaim an indigenous cultural heritage, Bob Marley’s criticisms of colonialism and white domination struck a powerful chord.58 Marley’s vision of redemption through a return to a more ‘natural’ way of life than that offered by Western civilization or the Christian Church also appealed to many young Maori.59 In Wellington, a city that would become the largest reggae market in the southern hemisphere, multiple reggae bands emerged in the wake of Marley’s visit. Politically oriented groups such as the band Herbs employed reggae to articulate Maori and broader Polynesian experiences alongside concerns about transnational issues, including nuclear proliferation. Reggae’s popularity contributed to new forms of individual and communal identity that explicitly linked the experiences of black people in New Zealand to others globally.60 Additionally, Marley and reggae offered a new countercultural style. For example, many young Maori grew dreadlocks and wore clothing that referenced the red, gold, and green of the Ethiopian flag. Some Maori even embraced Rastafari.61 Bob Marley’s music had profound resonances in many African nations as well. Marley’s popularity was particularly noticeable in southern Africa, a region that Marley addressed directly through songs about decolonization and national liberation. Marley’s most powerful commentary on 58  F.J. van Dijk, ‘JAHmaica: Rastafari and Jamaican Society, 1930–1990’, PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, 1998, 264; idem, ‘Chanting Down Babylon Outernational: The Rise of Rastafari in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific’ in Murrell, Spencer, and McFarlane, Chanting Down Babylon, 194. 59  Savishinsky, ‘Transnational Popular Culture’, 273–4; See also W.G. Hawkeswood, ‘I’N’I Ras Tafari: Identity and the Rasta Movement in Auckland’, MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, 1983. 60  Clough, ‘Jamming Down Under’, 26–9; L. Alvarez, ‘Reggae Rhythms in Dignity’s Diaspora: Globalization, Indigenous Identity, and the Circulation of Cultural Struggle’, Popular Music and Society vol. 31 (2008) no. 5, 575–97. 61  H. Bain, ‘Bob’s still stirring it up’, The Dominion (Wellington), 20 January 2001.

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contemporary African circumstances was the track ‘Zimbabwe’ from the album Survival (1979). The song brought increased attention to the Zimbabwe War of Liberation and encouraged insurgents in the waning days of their struggle against the white minority government. Bob Marley found keen audiences in neighboring South Africa as well. Because Marley’s music was so closely associated with the politics of liberation and resistance, the Apartheid government banned many of Marley songs. For instance, some of Marley’s most subversive music, such as ‘Zimbabwe’ and the album on which it featured, Survival, was censored, officially classified as ‘undesirable’ under the South African Publications Act of 1974. Only in 1992, as the Apartheid system collapsed, did the South African government officially reclassify Survival as ‘not undesirable’.62 In 1985 the Washington Post asserted that Marley’s music had become a ‘hi-fi doctrine of peace and liberation, heard from Nicaragua to South Africa’.63 As the Cold War drew to a close, Bob Marley remained a vehicle for sociopolitical critique. He would also continue to be a lodestar for armed movements from Southeast Asia to the Pacific and West Africa.64 During the 1990s Marley was a youth culture hero par excellence in many African countries. His popularity evidenced the influence of reggae as an art form, attraction to its countercultural style, frustration with conventional politics, and resistance to authoritarian governments. Sierra Leone offers a key example of Marley’s resonance among young people. In the 1980s, reggae, and Bob Marley specifically, was a primary means of 62  National Archives of South Africa, Cape Town Archives Repository (CAB), Cape Town, IDP3/398 P82/2/81 ‘Aansoek om ’n Beslissing – Survival’, 13 January 1982; P/92/07/36 ‘Application for Review, Survival’, 1 July 1992. See also J. Smith, ‘South Africa sees Body Heat but not the end of censorship’, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 4 May 1982. 63  M. Marriott, ‘Marley and His Message’, Washington Post, 11 February 1985. 64  For example, among those resisting the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor Marley became an inspirational icon of ‘just rebellion’ alongside Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela. See chapter 5 of Cambre, The Semiotics of Che Guevara. Marley’s image became closely associated with support for the Timorese rebels, Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste, or Falintil). Marley’s calls for neocolonial liberation were attractive to Falintil supporters, and since many saw parallels between Marley’s dreadlocks and the hairstyles of Falintil guerrillas, his personal style also acted as an international symbolic linkage. H. Myrttinen, ‘Masculinities, Violence, and Power in Timor Leste’, Revue Lusotopie vol. 12 (2005) no. 1–2, 240–241; Moreover, graffiti and other forms of iconography that demonstrated support for the rebels frequently referenced Bob Marley. H. Myrttinen, ‘Histories of violence, states of denial-militias, martial arts and masculinities in Timor-Leste’, PhD Thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010, 295.

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articulating anti-establishment sentiment. Dissenters, including university students and other young Freetown urbanites frequently repeated Marley’s lyrics in their critique of the oppressive conditions of political and economic life under Sierra Leone’s single-party government, the All People’s Congress. As in Switzerland, Marley and reggae represented a subversive youth culture and a link to transnational currents of dissent. In part as a result of Marley’s subversive symbolism, the rebel group the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) drew on Marley imagery in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance, RUF combatants began to use Bob Marley T-shirts as impromptu uniforms. This association of Marley with an increasingly ruthless insurgent group, one that became largely dependent on the use of child soldiers, led to the government’s effective criminalization of Marley merchandise.65 At the same time, a transformation in how audiences perceived Bob Marley was underway. In the late 1980s and 1990s many began to interpret Marley as a prophetic, transcendent mystic who represented not only social justice but also a concordant internationalist spirit. The latter proved particularly attractive with the dawn of an era of ‘globalization’ that not only evidenced stronger international linkages but also dramatic global inequalities. By the 1990s, Marley’s radical messages were frequently overshadowed by a popular, transnational reconceptualization of the reggae star as a ‘poet-prophet’, a symbol of global concordance with a saint-like aura.66 The interpretation of Bob Marley’s music as spiritually restorative was not new, but in the early 1990s the growing popularity of more anodyne Marley songs such as ‘One Love’ was emblematic of a more imprecise internationalism that overshadowed the revolutionary spirit of ‘Get Up, Stand Up’. As themes such as love, unity, and world peace resonated with a new generation of listeners, to some degree superseding Marley’s social justice messages, his popularity grew exponentially. More precisely, the revisionist interpretation of Marley as mystic widened his appeal well beyond Rastas, punks, political activists, and insurgents. Bob Marley resonated as a suprareligious figure in part, as I suggested above, because his lyrics exhibited deep spirituality but were general 65  L. Fofana, ‘Sierra Leone—Politics: Bob Marley Joins the War’, IPS-Inter Press Service, 6 June 1995; UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Sierra Leone: Humanitarian situation report, May (United Nations 2003). 66  B.  Clough, ‘Jamming Down Under: Bob Marley’s Legacy and Reggae Culture in Australia and New Zealand’ in Wint and Cooper, Bob Marley: The Man and his Music, 27.

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enough (or sufficiently confounding) to appeal to people of any faith—or none at all.67 The collective reinterpretation and increasingly myth-like image of Marley was also the result of new marketing strategies. Soon after Marley’s death, Island Records began to revise the reggae star’s image. In an attempt to appeal to a much wider audience than his earlier fan base, after Marley’s death Island Records repackaged many of his tracks in the form a retrospective album called Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and the Wailers (1984). Legend presented a softer image of Bob Marley and emphasized specific dimensions of Marley’s diverse catalog. Love songs featured prominently on the album as did tracks with spiritual themes, including ‘One Love/People Get Ready’ from the album Exodus (1977). The choice of tracks was the result of extensive market research in the UK, which identified the message of ‘One Love’ as more appealing than Marley’s social justice refrains. Many focus group listeners even reported that they disliked Marley’s songs of liberation, which they interpreted as threatening.68 As a result, Island Records shrewdly presented Marley as less a revolutionary and more a myth-like legend whose music, the album’s liner notes claimed, was ‘timeless and universal’.69 Finally, the image chosen for the album jacket was that of a soft, pensive Bob Marley.70 To promote Legend, Island Records released the single ‘One Love/ People Get Ready’ and produced a posthumous video for the song. During his life, Bob Marley never had a Top 40 single in Europe. However, seven years after its original issue, ‘One Love/People Get Ready’ was a hit on the UK charts and the album Legend held the number one position for 19 weeks. Before Marley’s death, his most popular album, Exodus, had sold less than 200,000 copies. Over the next three decades, Legend sold more than 27 million copies.71 Legend was an astonishing success and would  See Stephens, On Racial Frontiers, 215–6.  M.A. Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”: The North American Music Industry, the Legend of Bob Marley, and the Incorporation of Transnationalism’, Cultural Studies vol. 12 (1998) no. 2, 139–167, 145–6; P. Gilroy, ‘Wearing Your Art on Your Sleeve. Notes Toward a Diaspora History of Black Ephemera’ in Ibid., Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1993), 237–57; C. Salewicz, Bob Marley: The Untold Story (New York: Faber and Faber, 2009), 401–2; C. Kornelis, ‘How Bob Marley Was Sold to the Suburbs’, Phoenix New Times, 2 July 2014. 69  Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 68. 70  Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”’ 145–6; Gilroy, ‘Wearing Your Art on Your Sleeve’; Salewicz, Bob Marley, 401–2. 71  E.  Gundersen, ‘“Legend”: Bob Marley’s best-of album, lands on a milestone’, USA Today, 30 July 2009; Salewicz, Bob Marley, 402; Kornelis, ‘How Bob Marley Was Sold’. In 67 68

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become one of the best-selling records in history. The album thereby both introduced Bob Marley to a far larger audience and helped to cement an alternative image of Marley in the mind of multiple generations of listeners. Over the following decade Island Records would continue to encourage this milder interpretation of Marley. The 1992 Island Records CD box set Songs of Freedom and the 1995 release Natural Mystic would largely obscure Marley’s political missives.72 Bob Marley’s image was undergoing a significant makeover. Yet, within the context of this transformation and Marley’s popularization, his image continued to act as a mildly subversive subcultural reference. In North America and Europe many young people were attracted to Bob Marley and reggae as a result of their combined subversive connotations, alternative spirituality, and cultural style. For instance, in California a relaxed, youthful beach subculture gravitated toward a perceived ‘mystic universalism’ and elements of Rastafari aesthetics as a quasi-subversive countercultural identity.73 Similar subcultures emerged in other parts of the world albeit with different roots and manifestations. My research in Kenya offers one example. Since at least the early 1990s, Marley has been widely revered across Kenya, particularly by young middle-class and working-class men. For example, in the Swahili coastal town of Lamu, by the early 2000s there was likely no image more common than that of Bob Marley. One might hear Marley’s music in any quarter of the majority Muslim town, and many Marley flags flew from the sterns of Lamu’s fishing fleet. Most clothing venders sold some variety of Bob Marley T-shirts. Few young Lamuans claimed to be Rastafarians, yet Rastafari aesthetics sunk deep, enduring roots. Specifically, dreadlocks, red, gold, and green bracelets or necklaces as well as other symbols of Rastafari had become important countercultural signs. Those who gravitated to reggae and Rastafari cultural style had even come to be known as ‘Rastas’ in Lamu. The great majority of Lamu’s Rastas were Muslim, however, and did not adhere to any of the tenets of Rastafari. Rather, Rasta became a moderately subversive social identity that openly flouted some of Lamu’s more conservative social conventions. total, Marley has sold over 75 million albums since the mid-1990s. ‘How the Bob Marley Estate Still Makes Millions Every Year—Even Though He Died More Than 30 Years Ago’, Black Business.org, 9 April 2014, http://blog.blackbusiness.org/2014/04/how-bob-marley-estate-still-makes-millions.html#.VQaAUhYapGM. (accessed: 16 March 2015). 72  Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”’, 148–9. 73  N.  Finke, ‘Bibles, Blond Locks: the New Rastafarians’, Los Angeles Times, 15 March 1987; Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”’, 163.

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In this way, being a Rasta and listening to Bob Marley became an immediate way to resist the strictures of local social life.74 In the new millennium Marley has appealed to subcultural groups such as Rastas in Lamu, but his popularity, in part as a result of rebranding and popular reinterpretation, transcends any particular group or demographic. Marley’s charisma, the sincerity of his message, and his messianic tone has continued to encourage listeners to interpret his anthems as universally relevant as well as subversive. In his many guises, from rebel to suprareligious sage and legend, Marley has become ever-present, increasingly myth-like and one of the most recognizable global icons in history.

Conclusion Bob Marley was an artist and entertainer. But he had the unusual ability to join melody and the voice of suffering such that he became a symbol for justice, equality, and rejection of the status quo. Though Marley’s primary points of reference were his home country of Jamaica and Rastafari doctrine, listeners around the world found his ability to articulate shared experiences of suffering both empowering and liberating. Moreover, since his concept of liberation was anti-dogmatic and rooted in a Rasta worldview that few beyond the Caribbean understood, his message remained malleable and attracted a diverse transnational audience. Bob Marley’s appeal beyond initial Rastafarian and West Indian audiences was also a consequence of timing. His star rose as transnational interest in reggae grew, particularly among young people in the Caribbean, Western Europe, North America, Africa, and the Pacific. Marley’s words also channeled the emergent political sensibilities of the transnational left in the 1970s and 1980s, a period of widespread disillusionment with the forms of critique that gained purchase in the 1960s, including revolutionary socialism. As a result, Marley’s anti-establishment image proved attractive to a range of young people, from devout Rastafari to an avowedly anti-political youth movement in Switzerland and combatants in Sierra Leone. Marley’s unconventional aesthetic and rhetoric of resistance offered new anti-­ systemic imagery that appealed to youth subcultures searching for alternative heroes, authentic Third World voices, and an introspective vision of 74  This, in part, is why in 2014 a Lamu council assembly member voiced her intention to introduce a bill that would ban dreadlocks in Lamu. K. Kazungu, ‘Now Lamu Proposes to Outlaw Dreadlocks’, Daily Nation, 16 April 2014.

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social change.75 In these capacities he became a point of linkage connecting diverse listeners and fans. As the Cold War drew to a close and a new epoch of global interface emerged, Bob Marley was a globally recognizable voice for a variety of ideals and causes. Shifting emphases on Marley’s canon were transforming Bob Marley into something far greater than an icon of reggae, Rastafari, or any other movement. Fans and marketers simultaneously de-­emphasized the militant edges of Marley’s message by highlighting refrains such as ‘One Love’. By the turn of the millennium Bob Marley would be more commonly perceived as transcendent mystic than revolutionary. Yet, it is important to recognize that Marley’s broad appeal was not the result of the cooptation of his music by reactionary forces. Rather, it was a consequence of his polyvalence in conjunction with broad historical shifts. Marketing both played a key role in the transformation of Bob Marley’s image and responded to changing popular interpretations of him. Indeed, Marley’s trajectory demonstrates that the popularity of anti-systemic icons can develop in spite of or in tandem with significant commercialization. In fact,  his trajectory suggests that interpretations of Marley as rebel and ‘poet-prophet’ have to a certain degree even been mutually reinforcing. Individuals, groups, and movements have held these multiple dimensions of Bob Marley in dynamic tension, collectively emphasizing differing elements of his message across time and global space. In the recent past, Bob Marley the mystic has represented a sense of personal and communal possibility, and this wider social relevance has ensured that Marley has remained a voice for the grievances and aspirations of listeners. Even while Marley is now rarely celebrated as a proponent of revolution, his liberation thinking—that essential intellectual ingredient that powered his early rise to stardom among multiple groups and movements—continues to resonate among some listeners. Bob Marley’s capacity as an iconic figure may now be greater than it has ever been because he appeals not only to Rastas and reggae enthusiasts but also to proponents of a concordant world, those who see him as a suprareligious sage, and millions who are simply fond of his music. It is this combination of malleability and incontrovertibility, or the capacity of Bob Marley to be a vessel of shared and unique meaning that has ensured his long-term popularity. And as Marley has moved across this spectrum of 75  H. Bordowitz, ‘Marley: Cultural Icon’ in Borowitz (ed.), Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright, xiii–xv.

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meaning and historical memory we can discern something greater than a complicated afterlife and expanding fan base. Bob Marley’s trajectory, like that of many other figures, demonstrates that the most dynamic and unpredictable element of the youth icon is shifting collective memory, or the shared but unstable meaning that diverse audiences project onto iconic figures.

SECTION IV

Punk, Personal and Subcultural Memory

How do veteran subcultural actors remember subcultures? And how do they respond when their individual memories do not align with society’s remembering of ‘their’ subculture? Popular accounts of the histories of subcultures tend to focus on the stories told by subcultural actors, but the latter do not speak in a vacuum. Rather, their narratives and recollections are influenced by (and respond to) contemporary media accounts and stories. Actors are thus forced to negotiate individual memories and experiences with the cultural memory of subcultures. The following two chapters investigate the boundaries between individual and shared memories and the ways in which veteran subcultural actors speak about their past. Knud Andresen investigates 138 previously published interviews with former West-German punks, in order to assess how these subcultural actors describe their time as a punk. His aim is to ‘explore the field of tension between subcultural myths and individual experiences’. In the interviews, he identifies recurring themes and also instances where individual stories are at variance with popular narratives about the history of West-­ German punk. Interviews can thus strengthen subcultural myths and also serve to undermine them. Andresen, above all, calls on researchers to be aware of sensationalizing narratives, stating that ‘stories about violence and drugs say little about youths’ real social practices’. Rather than using interviews to foster subcultural myths, they should be used to critically assess them. While there has been no lack of interest in the history of (West-German) punk, and subcultural myths about punk abound, Dutch post-punk has

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only received scarce attention from scholars and the media. When one wishes to document and analyze the latter’s history, interviews again play a central role. Richard Foster provides a case study of how to counteract ‘the latent potential of these sources to create and further reify myths’. This not only involves a close reading and triangulation of all available sources, but also an awareness of how narratives are structured and presented. For even the history of under-researched music scenes can easily become shrouded in mythical stories. Together, the two chapters show the value and risks of interviews to subcultural research, and propose ways to unpack rather than reify subcultural myths.

CHAPTER 10

Memories of Being Punk in West Germany: Personal and Shared Recollections in Life Stories Knud Andresen

Soon after its inception in 1976, punk grew out to become one of the hegemonic youth cultures of the 1980s, as it spread from London to the European continent and beyond. In West Germany, as in many other countries, first encounters with punk brought about ruptures that shaped the identities and life courses of younger people to great lengths. For instance, when the West German Frank Bielmeier came across punk in 1977, it changed his life forever: ‘And suddenly I had a new identity and was accepted by all people. Therefore, I would never have called punk a trip. For me it was sacred.’1 As the beginning of Bielmeier’s life story above shows, the external social, economic, and political crises of the 1970s, which are traditionally 1  J. Teipel, Verschwende deine Jugend. Ein Doku-Roman über den deutschen Punk und New Wave (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 40.

K. Andresen (*) University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_10

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employed in academic writings to explain the rise and popularity of punk and its mantra ‘no future’,2 do not necessarily do so in its entirety. Its rise was, for example, also the outcome of developments within radical youth scenes: while many turned away from Marxism and radical theory from the 1970s, new youth cultures started to celebrate an intensive form of subjectivity, and turned their attention from abstract analysis toward individual experiences, feelings, and emotions. Punk perhaps formed the most prominent exponent of this subjective turn, as adherents translated it among others into practices of exuberant dilettantism, refusal of bourgeois career trajectories, and a rejection of traditional role models. In its place came other sentiments, such as the joy of social and cultural experimentation, and the celebration of creative potential. Punk was thus not only an expression of hopelessness and self-destructive attitudes, but also a highly creative youth scene that placed the subjective, emotional, and experiential level at the heart of its program. This subjective turn of punk around 1980 would eventually shape the personal life stories and collective identities of an entire generation. This subjective turn has even influenced research on punk, as it assigns a special role to Oral History and life stories as source material. ‘Being young’—in the sense of flexible, curious, and innovative—has become a well-established societal leitmotif within popular and academic writings on punk and in societies as a whole. But even though punk has received a great deal of attention from academic circles, researchers have not always dealt critically with the growing body of oral histories and (auto)biographies written by music journalists and punk veterans. As most written corpuses of youth subcultures consist mainly of historical approaches based on interviews with former actors, research on punk, too, has become part of a growing interest in witness accounts of historical eras and events; for many, these accounts hold the promise of authenticity.3 Indeed, who is better equipped to talk about historical events than those who were involved in them?4 2  See, for instance, F. Esposito, ‘No Future – Symptome eines Zeit-Geists im Wandel’ in: M.  Reitmayer and Th. Schlemmer (eds.), Die Anfänge der Gegenwart. Umbrüche in Westeuropa nach dem Boom (München: Oldenbourg, 2014), 95–108. 3  For instance, see for the US: L. McNeil and G. McCain, Please Kill Me. The uncensored Oral History of Punk (New York: Grove Press, 1996). For Britain, see: J. Savage, England’s Dreaming. Anarchy, Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (London: Martin’s Griffin, 2005). 4  M.  Sabrow and N.  Frei (eds.), Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012).

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Oral historians, however, are skeptical about the value of interviews as historical sources. In fact, the main claim of Oral History is that interviews do not describe the past, but offer retrospective reflections on individual life experiences. They do so in the present and through a narrative format. In the process of the Oral History interview, individual experiences are thus reinterpreted in the present, and influenced by what is currently deemed acceptable. Interviewees thus speak from a subjective perspective, but they do not speak from an isolated position. Rather, their stories contain responses to, or reflections on, well-known narratives and media representations. The interesting aspect, however, of Oral Histories is that they also provide individual deviations from historical master narratives, because interviews invite interviewees to reflect on the meaning of their own experiences and their place in a coherent life story.5 Jon Savage, who advanced the surge of Oral Histories on punk with his seminal overview England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (1991), represents the most extreme interpretation of this notion by claiming that punk represented a hunger for a ‘hyper-intensive present’, thus making the experience of punk so individual that it is impossible to interpret punk as a historical phenomenon.6 That this sentiment is not so marginal as one might think is exemplified by various books on West German punk, whose introductions state in similar ways that a scientific examination of punk is near-impossible, since there are so many different perspectives on the phenomenon.7 Interviewees also occasionally claim that one can only speak for oneself, not for everyone. These statements are intended as epistemological hammer blows. They undermine any attempt at a historical analysis of punk, if it were taken seriously. In reality, this ‘problem’ is not specific to punk history but applies to history as a whole; historical events are 5  Oral History started in the 1980s in Germany as a methodological approach designed to give voice to the downtrodden and the oppressed. Since then, however, the methods and conceptualizations of Oral History have broadened and subsequently become less dogmatic. Dorothee Wierling, ‘Oral History’, in: Michael Maurer (ed.), Aufriß der Historischen Wissenschaften, Band 7: Neue Themen und Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaft, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003), 81–155, 133. 6  Savage, England’s Dreaming, x. 7  See for example: Teipel, Verschwende deine Jugend, 9; M. Büsser, If the kids are united. Vom Punk zu Hardcore und zurück (Mainz: Ventil, 2003), 8; IG Dreck auf Papier (eds.), Keine Zukunft war gestern. Punk in Deutschland (Berlin: Archiv der Jugendkulturen, 2008), 4; Ph. Meinert and M. Seeliger, ‘Warum eine wissenschaftliche Anthologie über Punk?’ in: Ph. Meinert and M. Seeliger (eds.), Punk in Deutschland. Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013), 7–8.

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always remembered differently by individuals and historical interpretations always represent a surplus over individual memories. The claim that individual punk experiences and memories cannot be generalized into a historical narrative is probably not always meant as absolute as it sounds; otherwise, it cannot be explained that the claim is generally followed by several hundred pages of text and interviews. It seems more likely that the claim is meant to arm the writer or interviewee against criticism that things are misrepresented or contested, especially by other participants of the subculture. Furthermore, the claim echoes the radical subjectivity and rejection of analytical distance that characterized punk culture. Finally, the popularity of interviews with former punks is perhaps also part of an effort to raise the actors’ subjective perspectives to the standard of interpretation. These reservations make it challenging for researchers to move beyond the plethora of personal stories and make broader claims on the origins and history of punk, even in the case of other youth cultures. Yet, it is exactly this plethora of personal stories that is invaluable for analyzing punk as a historical phenomenon. These stories, generally based on interviews, often focus on specific bands and the life stories of individual artists and fans, thereby mythicizing punk’s early years. The task of a historian is to critically assess her/his sources, in this case interviews, and ask to what extent they are telling of one’s own personal experience, and to what extent they express or reflect on shared stories and narratives. This chapter will argue that an analysis of the relation between the two—the personal and the shared memories—can serve to explore the field of tension between subcultural myths and individual experiences. The goal of this undertaking is not to refute individual statements by dubbing them ‘narratives’. Rather, the goal is to establish where individual and collective stories align or collide.

The Relationship Between Myths and Biographical Narratives Such an approach does not aim to debunk historical myths with fact-based analyses. Myths have an integrative function in all human communities, including subcultures. Thus, historian Matthias Waechter has stated: ‘What is decisive for a mythically narrated story is that it does not seek to convince through rational or empirical evidence, but rather appeals to

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people’s emotions and wants to awaken among them faith in the truth of that which is narrated.’8 The narrated stories function as symbolic capital and raise the question who is capable and allowed to remember events, interpret them, and imbue them with meaning. The creation of biographical narratives can serve as an important step in the process of myth-making within youth cultures and other collectives. Interviewees contribute a biographical and individual perspective to the formation of collective myths within the subcultural group by framing and selecting their stories. Interviews can form a rich source for historical research, but only under the condition that the researcher acknowledges that the interviews do not tell a story ‘as it unfolded in real life’. Rather, interviewees inscribe their stories into overarching personal biographies, which eventually become intertwined with self-perceived grand narratives or myths surrounding a youth culture. For example, through biographical interviews the collective conviction, or myth, that punk had a deeply entrenched rebellious nature can be corroborated by personal stories about deviant behavior, or by highly subjective reflections on former struggles against one’s assimilation into bourgeois society. The biographical interviews used in this chapter were not done by the author, but are taken from published works and thus have gone through various filters of editing and selection. The analysis can therefore only yield tentative conclusions. The analysis is based on four books on West German punk, most of which consist of interviews. The highly popular and well-­ known book Verschwende deine Jugend (waste your youth), published by the journalist Jürgen Teipel in 2001, has not been included in this selection. Teipel characterized his book as a ‘docu-novel’, in which passages from various interviews are reassembled in chronological chapters.9 The novel is based on interviews with prominent musicians from the three early West German punk strongholds Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Hamburg, and triggered a renewed interest for the early years of punk in the Federal Republic. Teipel’s work is illustrative of the prominent role of interviews in (historical) literature on West German punk. It also contains various narratives that would later come to dominate the popular image of early punk youths. For example, punk is connected to early adulthood, which is described as a very important life phase, with major influence on one’s 8  M.  Waechter, ‘Mythos Version: 1.0’, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 11 February 2010, www.docupedia.de/zg/Mythos?oldid=123627 (accessed: 2 May 2018). 9  Teipel, Verschwende deine Jugend.

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later biography. Teipel also zooms in on the punks’ dilettantism, the aggression and violence against punks as well as the violence among the punks themselves, at the same time analyzing their attitude regarding mainstream society. Due to the format, however, the individual narratives remain underdeveloped. Rather, this chapter is based on four other publications that are based on interviews. The first one, Keine Zukunft war Gestern (No future was yesterday), was published by the Berlin-based Archive of Youth Cultures, an institute with great affinity to youth cultures.10 As a compendium, it contains a chronology of punk in West Germany, a number of essays, and six interviews. The subsequent two volumes No Future? and Yesterday’s Kids are constructed around photographs and contain numerous individual interviews.11 Neither one of the mentioned publications contains descriptions of the interview situations, and often do not even mention the questions asked. Salvio Incorvaia is the only author who has written a volume with a scientific claim to Oral History. In his book Der klassische Punk: Eine Oral History, he analyzes ten interviews with punks from Düsseldorf and speaks of a generation of 1978, characterizing them as the first generation to be completely exposed to (and responding to) ‘the individualizing tendencies of Western capitalist societies’.12 The 138 interviews taken from these four books mainly feature people who were born between 1960 and 1965 and were between their early 40s and early 50s at the time of the interviews. Most of them were still working and in some cases were still associated with punk or musical subcultures through their professional activities. As biographical and contextualizing data is often missing or incomplete, a social profile could not be obtained from the interviews. Nevertheless, some preliminary observations can be made. First, there is a clear overrepresentation of men, which is not surprising given the fact that punk subculture was dominated by young men. Only 28 interviews in the four books (20 percent of the analyzed interviews) were conducted with women. Secondly, many interviewees (and interviewers) hold punk to be a continuous point of reference in their lives. Thirdly, many of those who  Dreck auf Papier, Keine Zukunft war gestern.  M. Fehrenschild, G. Keller and D. Pietsch, No Future? 36 Interviews zum Punk (Berlin: Archiv der Jugendkulturen, 2014); T. Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids (Berlin: Hirnkost, 2016). 12  S.  Incorvaia, Der klassische Punk. Eine Oral History. Biografien, Netzwerke und Selbstbildnis einer Subkultur im Düsseldorfer Raum 1977–1983 (Essen: Klartext, 2017), 511. 10 11

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came to punk at a young age dropped out of (high) school early, although there are also many who completed or discontinued vocational training. According to Incorvaia, the majority of punks stemmed from families which had only recently ascended from proletarian backgrounds into the middle classes.13 Finally, most of the interviewees belonged to the ‘rank and file’ of the punk scene, in the sense that they did not pursue a professional artist’s career.

Myths and Corresponding Life Stories: Four Examples From the interviews, four narratives have been abstracted that are frequently encountered in the interviews—myths that are held to be life-­ changing, identity-forming, and life-defining to the interviewees. This number is not conclusive, as other aspects can also be thematized, such as geography, musical style, and so forth. Yet, these four narratives do represent prominent narrative patterns that are linked to different subcultural myths regarding punk. Explosion: The Way to Punk Youth cultures are not a given historical factor, but come into existence through social processes. Therefore, it is necessary to ask how individuals found their way into youth cultures. The interviews provide various answers, but a common element in many of them is the moment of abrupt change, triggered for example by hearing punk music for the first time. ‘It was like an explosion to my body, the senses and my mind’, tells Sir Hannes about the time when he first heard punk rock in 1976, at the age of 13.14 Monique, born in 1958, describes the first time she listened to the Sex Pistols, after seeing punks during a trip to England: ‘Headphones on, heard the song, I was hot and cold with surprise, headphones off – bought the record.’15 Fan cultures often share a narrative of awakening to describe a person’s entry into a fan culture, and most of the punk interviewees remember  Incorvaia, Der klassische Punk, 517.  In several books, interviewees are only introduced using first names or nicknames. These have been retained here. Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 338. 15  Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 8. 13 14

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their coming to punk according to this narrative.16 Martina, born in 1960, heard the British punk band The Stranglers for the first time at a friend’s house: ‘[T]hat was a revelation for me. That booming bass, that aggression! I sat there as if electrified.’17 This narrative elevates the path to punk to something special, it awakens the punks from an unconscious phase. Since this awakening often occurs during early adolescence—between 12 and 16 years old—it becomes an initiation into a new life phase.18 This suggestion of punk being special is reinforced by stories of interviewees about their relation to the outside world that contrasted with their personality. ‘I discovered relatively early that I tick differently from the other kids and also have a different life’, says Puschel from Düsseldorf.19 Liane, who came from the German Democratic Republic, or communist East Germany, also begins her interview with the words: ‘As a child, I realized early on that I was somehow different.’20 Punk, it is suggested, provided a new view of the world that others could not comprehend, because it only spoke to people who were already outside of the ‘mainstream’. The explosion narrative emphasizes the deep rift that contact with punk brought about; the biography is therefore divided into a time before and a time after the punk explosion. Kübel emphasized: ‘This is how my hitherto unconsciously hard but cool life began to develop, let’s call it a second birth.’21 Even so, the importance of hearing punk for the first time may in reality not have been as strong as is often suggested. People often situate that moment in a phase of becoming adolescent, which also signifies a biographical break. The narrative has become part of the subcultural myth because it underlines punk’s peculiarity. There are, however, also other, more plausible, narratives in which such an abrupt change in lifestyle does not take place. Peter reluctantly answers the question of how he came to punk: ‘I don’t really remember. I was young and I liked it.’22 He was, however, born in 1958 and thus somewhat older than the rest. He had already had other musical preferences before hearing punk the first time and may thus be an exception.  M. Hills, Fan-Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2010).  Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 118. 18  Incorvaia, Der klassische Punk, 152 and 161. 19  Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 332. 20  Ibid., 397. 21  Ibid., 220. 22  Ibid., 356. 16 17

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This narrative is nothing unusual for fan cultures. In punk narratives, however, the explosion, the cut between before and after, is often strongly emphasized. As an ‘explosion myth’, it inscribes the powerful eruption of the new youth culture into one’s own biography. At the same time, however, the more detailed interviews that Incorvaia has published reveal that this narrative only offers a limited perspective. The narrative of the explosion obscures other social development processes that were instrumental to the rise of punk. While scholarship often focuses on the social and political context in which punk came to rise, interviewees emphasize a narrative of punk as something completely different and new. In reality, however, the rise of punk is maybe more connected to the individual experience of coming-of-age than has been acknowledged up to now. Distinction and Counterculture: Punks Against the ‘Others’ The narrative of explosion is often connected to a strong narrative about ‘others’. Since punk takes a self-chosen outsider position vis-à-vis authorities, conflicts with various power brokers are important for the identities of punks. In interviews, one of the most recounted ‘others’ are parents, who are generally described as petit-bourgeois and narrow-minded, sometimes even violent and usually dismissive of punk. However, not every punk experienced intense confrontations with parents. The interviews also present numerous accounts of liberal and understanding parents, though still ambiguous toward punk.23 Tom, born 1963 and a migrant from Portugal, emphasized: ‘My parents have always been a little ashamed of me, but they have always stood beside me.’24 Traditional and conservative child-rearing became bit by bit replaced by a more loose approach, partly due to the progressive messages of the left-alternative student movement of 1968, but also because, more generally, parents’ expectations of their children had changed since the 1960s. Many parents wanted to give their children opportunities for self-development and wanted to communicate with them on an equal level. The moment when youths encountered punk

23  Mario, born 1968, became a punk at the age of 12, Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 126; David attended a manifestation with his mother in 1981 and came in contact with punks, Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 201. 24  Incorvaia, Der klassische Punk, 263.

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in the middle of the 1970s, discipline and obedience were no longer the most important educational goals for many families.25 The second group of ‘others’ that features prominently are the ‘soft’ left-alternative youths of the previous generation. The interviewees are altogether dismissive of them and dismiss them as ‘hippies’. Often, the later function as symbols for the generation of 1968 or as markers for popular musical styles.26 The ‘hippies’ are described as leftists, educators, and pacifists. The singer Annette Humpe of the group Ideal stated in 1981 in an interview: ‘The term “alternative” makes me aggressive. In my opinion, that word is exhausted and chewed out.’27 Punks embraced a hatred for ‘hippies’ and the ‘left-wing bourgeoisie’,28 and instead celebrated ‘superficiality’, directness, and confrontation.29 In most interviews, however, these claims remain general, and references to real encounters with ‘hippies’ remain scarce. These narratives on left-alternative youngsters often equate the political side of ‘hippiedom’ with their less political side, thereby also dismissing the leisure affinities with which this generation was associated with: ‘My classmates hung out in tea rooms, listened to horrible blues rock stuff and chained themselves to nuclear power stations in their leisure time.’30 These were the type of things that punks rejected altogether as cringy, old-fashioned, and dogmatic. In many interviews, the third group of ‘others’ is formed by mostly classmates and teachers. They symbolize the society that punks rejected, namely mainstream society and a boring and conformist way of life. The negative descriptions are more topoi than real stories, because in many interviews it also becomes clear that, next to other punks, other people who, at first instance, seemed conventional also had a positive influence on 25  Detlef Siegfried and Axel Schildt, Deutsche Kulturgeschichte. Die Bundesrepublik von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (München: Hanser, 2009), 344. 26  Interview with Sir Hannes in Dreck auf Papier, Keine Zukunft war gestern, 342. 27  Sven Reichhardt, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft. Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), 36f. 28  Cf. the song ‘Hippies’ by the Brunswick punk band Böhse Onkelz on the sampler ‘Soundtrack zum Untergang’ 1982; or the song ‘Linke Spießer’ by the Berlin band Ätztussis from 1980, reproduced in: W. Müller, Subkultur Westberlin 1979–1989. Freizeit (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2013), 81. 29  Cf. with instructive sections on punk-minded intelligence around the magazine Spex: Nadja Geer, Sophistication zwischen Denkstil und Pose. Untersuchungen zu einem Habitus der Distinktion in der Literatur der Gegenwart (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2012). 30  Susanne, 1964, who had to ‘rebel against nothing’. Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 157.

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the youths’ ways of life. However, as punks generally rejected mainstream society and ‘the system’, a trope which is emphasized time and again, this narrative rarely becomes specific. This rejection of ‘mainstream society’ is often referred to when interviewees describe breaking off traditional school and career paths. Dropping out of school or vocational training thus becomes an act of societal refusal based on emotional motives. This narrative of the ‘other’, together with the emphasis on distinction in the coming-of-age or ‘explosion narrative’, therefore builds toward a myth of rebellion. Rudi Krawall emphasizes that he became a punk because he no longer wanted to be ‘an insignificant little guy’.31 Punk, by its distinct and confrontational nature, made it possible to become an ‘I’, in the sense of being an individual, in contrast to the ‘others’. This ‘other narrative’ thus confirms seemingly subcultural myths of rebellion and rejection by society. It tells of demarcation and distinction, of a seemingly hostile environment. This notion is often associated with punk: punk is thought to be merely aggressive, destructive, and confrontational. Although some of the interviews tell of such feelings, it only describes one aspect of being punk in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. The interviews also contain numerous stories of understanding ‘others’,32 of contacts outside the punk scene, of helpful teachers and supportive environments. In the interviews, however, the ‘others’ mostly function as a projection, as a demarcation motif, without fully appreciating or nuancing the positive role that the ‘others’ could have had on the identity formation and lives of punk youths. An Intensive, Total, and Deviant Experience: Live Fast, Die Young For many, punk meant a ‘hyper-intense present’. According to many interviews, life as a punk consisted of intense experiences, such as concerts, parties, fights, and adventures of various kinds. Of course, youth is generally described as a formative phase and an eventful time, in which young people tend to experiment to get to know who they are and who they

 Dreck auf Papier, Keine Zukunft war Gestern, 312.  The parents of Anna, born 1964, were absolutely against her punk-attitude, and she left home for a while. The family used mediation to solve the problems of living together. Incorvaia, Der klassische Punk, 283–285. 31 32

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want to be. This therefore does have to be specific for punks.33 Nevertheless, the interviews with punks reveal a specific narrative of a totalizing experience of a more intense kind. This includes both casual and extreme usage of drugs and alcohol. Mrs. Schmidt, born in Berlin in 1962, describes one of her experiences as such: ‘First, I donated blood, and immediately after I had a six-pack [beer]; that really kicked in.’34 The attitudes toward alcohol and drugs also had a dark side, which many interviewees mention. Various interviewees mention former friends who have died from alcohol and drug abuse.35 Drug abuse is also associated with difficulties in personal lives, when early consumption of intoxicants is described as the start of later addictions.36 That extreme consumption of drugs is an important part of deviant image and myth-making is best illustrated by the story of Karl Nagel, one of the initiators of the notorious Hannover Chaos Days of 1983 and the Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany (APPD). Both the event and the ‘party’ made a cult of alcohol consumption, but Nagel overall refrained from extreme alcohol intake. Since his father was an alcoholic, he himself generally steered away from drug consumption. In an interview, he describes himself as a ‘professional provocateur’ who still runs a web forum on German punk and its history.37 Some, especially male interviewees, emphasize the presence of violence of various kinds. On the one hand, punks faced threats of violence, since they stylized themselves as folk devils. In many of the cases, threats were not realized.38 More often, violence pops up in stories about fights between punk musicians and the audience, or in stories about antagonistic relations between various groups of punks. Violence was mainly a factor during the early years of punk and was used to demarcate older punks from younger newcomers. In a new scene in which an age difference of one or two years was already a significant marker, violence could play a role to establish who was a ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ punk. However, this type of aggression had already decreased significantly by the mid-1980s.39 Violence, then, is often 33  L.  Apel, ‘Gefühle in Bewegung. Autobiographisches Sprechen über die Jugend’ in: K. Andresen, L. Apel and K. Heinsohn (eds.), Es gilt das gesprochene Wort. Oral History und Zeitgeschichte heute (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015), 59–77. 34  Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 98. 35  Ibid.; Dreck auf Papier, Keine Zukunft war Gestern, 308. 36  Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 30. 37  Ibid., 19f. 38  Ibid., 319; 373. 39  Ibid., 329.

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used as a cipher in punks’ personal narratives. It rarely had a personal impact, but is rather part of the myth of the wild years of becoming and being a punk. The narrative of the totalizing experience also includes traveling to other cities, where other punks provided shelter and accommodation. It describes the feeling of belonging to a special group and transgression of social norms, of exploring new places and going on new adventures. Which scene or city was more hardcore or more authentic? Which city had a more artistic or musical value? Often, these narratives revolve around the experience of breaking with social conventions, at least when they are articulated in retrospect. With this totalizing narrative, as in the case of the two former narratives, connections between individual narratives and subcultural myths become apparent again. Here, punk life is described as intense and exciting, and many life stories are marked by unconventional lifestyles, at least in the adolescent phase. It is described as an exciting lifestyle that led to a break with society. Nevertheless, some hints, such as the fact that violence is usually described as an abstract threat rather than a real-life practice, point to the fact that it also serves to inscribe personal experiences into wider myths about punks; myths, then, have the tendency to streamline and homogenize different personal experiences and life stories, instead of purely conveying real and differentiating developments. Rationalizations of Punk and the Integration of Punk Into One’s Life Story For many of the interviewees, punk was not only a particularly intensive phase of their youth; it also in a way prolonged their youths, as they abandoned school or vocational training, as well as professional career paths. In light of this, many interviews contain rationalizations of what it meant to be punk. According to these narratives, (being) punk was more than just a youth rebellion. Sir Hannes says: ‘My aim was to reduce prejudice and address shortcomings in society.’40 In the broadest sense, many claims to have promoted the liberalization of social norms and tolerance in society, opening up the possibilities of what a person can be or can become. This rationalization is attractive to many and also plays an important role in socio-educational discourses on youth subcultures: they contribute to an  Dreck auf Papier, Keine Zukunft war Gestern, 339.

40

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understanding and tolerance toward unconventional lifestyles. This development was in line with the growing tolerance that has been a basic social trend in industrial societies since the 1960s,41 though punk seems to form one of the youth cultures that capitalized this trend. This may seem a little surprising in the face of many myths: for almost all those interviewed, punk was not about self-destruction in the face of an assumed dark future but about creativity. Becoming punk was experienced as a ‘liberation’ that enabled new ideas and gave youths a feeling of empowerment. As punks, they were able to do everything, even as dilettantes.42 For Harry Rag, born in 1959 and singer of the band SYPH, punk was about self-confidence: ‘Punk was not about whether a song was good or bad, but about creativity.’ He currently works as a filmmaker and sees punk as the enabler of his later professional life: ‘I simply maintained this attitude: everything is possible!’43 The slogan ‘no future’, which has always been associated with punk, has not become part of the punk life story for these people. For the interviewees, punk was a future-oriented subculture that gave youths solid ground under their feet and hope for the future. Karl Nagel emphasizes: ‘I am sure that without punk, I would have been totally bogged down and would perhaps be underground today. In this respect, “no future!” has only made the future possible for me.’44 Ute Wieners, a friend of Nagel from Hannover, brings a similar perspective to the fore in an autobiographical sketch, in which she describes punk as a lifesaver from terrible family circumstances.45 Punk is thus not only rationalized as an important political statement and symbol, but also as an important source for forming and rationalizing one’s own unique life choices and life path. When explicitly asked about the present, reflections and narratives to what extent the interviewees still identify themselves as punk vary greatly, 41  See for example A. Marwick, The Sixties. Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958 – c. 1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). For the seventies in the US, see for example: B.J. Schulman, The Seventies. The great shift in American culture, society and politics (Cambridge: Da Capo, 2002). For Germany, see: Dietz, Ch. Neumaier and A.  Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? Neue Forschungen zum gesellschaftlich-kulturellem Wandel seit den 1960er Jahren (München: Oldenbourg, 2014). 42  Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 466. 43  Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 146. 44  Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 20. 45  U. Wieners, Zum Glück gab es Punk. Autobiographische Erzählungen (Hannover: Verlag des Arbeitskreises Regionalgeschichte, 2014).

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since all individual interviewees’ took different paths and decisions after their adolescent punk phases. Some claim that they have never stopped being punk. Thus, Erich from Munich explains: ‘I never have and never will, for the rest of my life, listen to anyone or fulfil anyone’s expectations.’46 But such straightforward identifications are not always the rule, as some interviewees state that their lives developed in precarious ways over time, or even in ways that were at odds with what punk stands for, thereby questioning to what extent one can uphold such an empowering identity. Many stories, also those of Erich, namely deal with alcohol and drug abuse and personal crises, an entry into professional life, the founding of a family and getting children, as well as an exit from the scene at a certain point in life. Karsten, born in 1964, has no diploma despite a number of failed attempts to study. When asked if he is still punk, he answers: ‘With the best will in the world, I don’t know when I gave up that name for myself, except that it happened gradually sometime in the ’90s. Maybe that can be called becoming an adult?’47 He is critical of his own consumption of alcohol and drugs, because in retrospect it has curbed his opportunities for professional and personal development. Some completely reject the question. According to Annette, born in 1960, the question if one is still punk is insignificant: ‘There are more important things in life than the question: “How do I retain my punk-self until retirement?”’48 Nevertheless, the majority of the interviewees emphasize the ways in which they continue to cultivate elements of punk in their current lives. That being punk is mainly a youth experience is in fact highly contested, as many interviewees still identify themselves as punks. Above all concert visits are indicative in this context. Rudi Krawall, who now lives in Perth, states: ‘One is a punk rocker by heart and lives by its rules, it is a life attitude instead of a passing fashion.’ Even so, when confronted by youths at the concerts, Krawall agrees that his lifestyle did change in some way: ‘Of course I don’t hang out with them every day and drink beer pointlessly, those days are over.’49 To most interviewees, the liberating promises that punk held thus proved to be decisive in the shaping of their attitudes, which they kept with them later in life. Bernd, born in Aalen in 1962 and graduated from  Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 20.  Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 40. 48  Ibid., 24; Hackemack, Yesterday’s Kids, 345. 49  Dreck auf Papier, Keine Zukunft war Gestern, 320. 46 47

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high school, emphasizes that for him punk meant above all creativity. Becoming a punk at the age of 13, he founded in 1988 an advertising agency together with a friend, without any previous knowledge. He became so successful that a few years later he became a member of the Board of Management of the German Telekom company. Having earned enough money, he quit his board activities and founded the ‘Club of Marrakesh’, an internationally operating think-tank for ecological innovation. He hardly talks about his experiences as a punk or his past, and above all else focuses on current ecological threats. The central theme in his life, he claims, is creativity. And this creativity was stimulated by punk: ‘For me punk was not destructive, but a precondition for innovation.’50 His biography stands out somewhat because of his professional success. Instead, the majority of the interviewees speak from a position of precarious social conditions. At the same time, it illustrates the great variety of life trajectories after punk, and the simultaneous effort by various former punks to place punk in their life stories. Thus, whatever way their subsequent lives have developed, most of the interviewees associate punk, not with destructiveness but with creativity and a hunger for new experiences. Even if some talk about missed opportunities, an integration narrative prevails, in which punk is characterized as an important and formative phase, which is still meaningful in the present. Annette shows the considerable changes in life expectations and attitudes that have occurred as she grew older. When asked about her past and present feelings, she states: ‘Without punk my life would have ended badly. Everything came together, the hatred of the state, the despair, the loneliness – it all came together in a pogo dance and I could blow off steam. – The rage is gone? – Yes, I now pay taxes – What did you hope for? – Heart attack during a pogo dance – What did you get? – The man I wanted.— What’s left? – Love.’51 In the end, the narrative of rationalization reflects on the question of consequence: Will one stay punk until the end or is there a life after punk? The interviewees are quite preoccupied with this question. The narrative of rationalization serves to integrate the often intense punk phase in a positive way into a larger life story. Creativity, a feeling of liberation, and a radicalized subjectivity are the most important topoi employed to give meaning to the youthful punk experience, which is even pursued and identified into adulthood.  Fehrenschild, Keller and Pietsch, No Future?, 50.  Ibid., 26.

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Conclusion The interview volumes are part of a historicization of punk that has gained considerable momentum in recent years. For a contemporary youth subculture, it is not surprising that this historicization takes cue from the stories told by former actors and is largely conveyed through the media. In the process, the subculture itself has seemingly lost its teeth. The German television show ‘Pop 2000’, which was broadcast at the beginning of the millennium, contrasted the youth cultures of ‘punks’ and ‘poppers’ (a scene of conservative and consumer-oriented youths), but did not discuss controversial youth groups such as skinheads, neo-Nazis, or left-­alternative autonomist activists. Punks are positively inscribed in the history of the 1980s.52 The same can be observed with regard to the myths and legends that continue to surround punk. In these days, they do not revolve around a ‘moral panic’, but emphasize punk’s positive aspects. This includes its rebellious impulse, its influence on musical culture, its hunger for authentic life experiences beyond mainstream society and finally its role as an expression of economic and political frustration. Historical practice, however, should not focus on the myths’ contents but rather on the social factors that give rise to them. As already mentioned at the beginning, this does not mean that certain narratives are to be refuted, but rather that they are to be contextualized both socially and culturally. The fact that during youth many crave new experiences and that this urge can be seen in stories about violence and drugs says little about youths’ real social practices. To analyze the latter, it remains necessary to use a wider selection of sources and not to focus solely on the life stories of former punks. Archives of the police, child services, schools, and other educational institutions provide a very different perspective that cannot be left out. Viewed from a source-critical perspective, interviews offer the opportunity to analyze a mixture of personal memories, shared stories among friends, and media myths about subcultures. Oral History takes cue from the finding that people retroactively create a coherent life story. However, interviews are not primary sources from the past, but sources from a retrospective perspective, which are shaped by both the situation of the interviewee and by what is generally accepted. Methodically treated in this way, 52  On Retro-Shows: Th. Lindenberger and H. Stahl, ‘Geschichtsmaschine Pop Politik und Retro im vereinten Fernseh-Deutschland’ in: A.  Geisthövel and B.  Mrozek, Popgeschichte Band 1: Konzepte und Methoden (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013), 227–247.

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the intertwined personal histories and grand narratives that can be abstracted from these interviews thereby offer important approaches to the history and memory of subcultures. Interviews and oral histories point out the variance of told experiences about becoming and being part of a youth culture. However, since interviews take place retrospectively and are shaped by the social situation of the speaker, it is necessary to contextualize the interview situation. For example, is the interviewee a socially secure former punk who classifies his punk phase as creative and helpful for his later life, or is the interviewee someone who lives in precarious conditions and has to combat addiction and overcome personal tragedies? Does someone talk about experiences of violence as an adventure or as a traumatic experience? The social situation also includes the social origin and family background. Life story interviews always have an individual linchpin. On the other hand, general interpretations, such as that punk was a reaction to economic crises and youth unemployment, can be relativized by individual life stories. This also applies to subcultural myths such as rebellion against the ‘system’ or the explosive spread of punk. Therefore, when analyzing interviews, it is important to consider whether interviewees adapt their narrative to the myths and thus reproduce them. The analysis in this contribution offers an impression of the kinds of narratives that can be expected from former actors, despite biographical variances. These are tied to myths, since narratives about, for instance, the ‘others’ or rationalizations of life choices, often refer and relate to developments and sentiments of a general kind and often move beyond one’s own experience. It is evident that the interviewees proudly speak of their punk existence. For the majority, these were heroic times. The narratives reflect the myth of the rebellious youth subculture, which has a lasting effect into adulthood. A social and cultural-historical examination of punk should take this into account and critically examine these sources rather than accept the information that they contain at face value.

CHAPTER 11

Mapping Subcultures from Scratch: Moving Beyond the Mythology of Dutch Post-Punk Richard Foster

Graves at my command have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forth, by my so potent Art. Prospero: The Tempest. Act V, scene 1

How does a researcher successfully document an under-researched music scene like Dutch post-punk? And how should that scene’s myths be evaluated? Given a lack of literature on the topic, interviews with scene actors and primary source material form the main basis of initial research. But neither source can be taken at face value and both require critical dissemination. Specific analytical tools and approaches are required to avoid the latent potential of these sources to create and further reify myths. How, then, to identify the pitfalls around documenting, presenting and curating the narratives of the original actors? This chapter provides a case study on how to reconstruct and deconstruct the myths that surround a musical scene that has received almost no scholarly attention, paying attention to

R. Foster (*) Music Writer (The Quietus, The Wire), Rotterdam, The Netherlands © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_11

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the practicalities of such research. In doing so, it argues that the works of DeNora, Hagen and Bennett are of great use to researchers, as they show that myth-making and acts of remembrance act as a continually evolving resource for subcultural actors.

Dutch Post-Punk: Its History and Myth of Undervaluation Dutch post-punk was an innovative musical subculture with a unique sound, an invigorating visual aesthetic and an assertive, independent voice. Originally inspired by punk’s do-it-yourself ethos but also drawing on many cultural ideas from 1960s social and cultural movements—such as Provo and Fluxus—the sound of Dutch post-punk slowly took form in the country’s art schools, youth clubs and squats during 1978–1979. Incorporating politics, publishing, broadcasting, fashion, (guerrilla and fine) art and clubbing along the way, the activities of the Dutch post-­ punks became an established part of the wider European and American alternative musical network by 1980. The enervating mix of visual and conceptual art, homespun intellectualism and a fiercely experimental musical attitude often found a wider audience. Dutch post-punk bands such as Amsterdam’s Minny Pops, Eindhoven’s Plus Instruments and Nijmegen’s Mekanik Kommando found international success and worked closely with international peers in the alternative live circuit. These acts and others also enjoyed patronage and promotion from important international actors such as BBC’s radio disc jockey John Peel, writers such as Paul Morley and record labels such as Manchester’s Factory Communications. Through their diverse activities and initiatives—organizing gallery shows and residencies, setting up nightclubs and arts centers, launching innovative broadcast and print media, even their adoption of retro fashions—Dutch post-punk actors and associates contributed in an important way to the Netherlands’ arts, club and festival cultures in the late 1980s, through to the early 1990s. Despite this broad range of activities, Dutch post-punk ultimately failed to establish itself permanently as a successful music style in its own right and its individual voice faded over time. The established Dutch music industry seems to have viewed the bands with bemusement and suspicion, attitudes which could also have contained a certain element of cultural

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cringe. An interview with Minny Pops’ singer Wally van Middendorp for a British fanzine from Sheffield, Different for Grils in 1980 illustrates the uncertain, unformed relation between Minny Pops and the wider Dutch music industry. It’s a strange situation, us being in England doing a single and hardly getting any press back home in some way. It’s getting better since we’re doing this Factory single, but before that people said, ‘Well, you know, your music is not so good…’ The music hasn’t changed between April and now, but since we could tell people we’re doing a single for Factory they say, ‘Yeah – I always thought your music improved a lot over the past few months’.1

Wally van Middendorp’s sardonic remark clearly encourages the reader to conclude that many in the Dutch music business and music media undervalued Minny Pops’ output despite its latent international appeal. The narrative of ‘undervaluation’ is found in many of the recollections of those in the Dutch post-punk scene. It has been voiced by multiple scene actors in later interviews and presented (courtesy of remembered quotes and conversations, or comparisons of favorable foreign press reviews with unfavorable Dutch counterparts) in the sparse literature on the subject. The argument is often presented to show that Dutch post-punk music— despite the musicians’ own firm beliefs—was seen by those then setting the national pop music agenda as unprofessional and unnecessarily antagonistic, or too in thrall to uncommercial trends to be part of the country’s pop narrative. For their part, fiercely independent post-punk musicians later claimed that they felt ‘totally out of the reference system’2 of bodies like Stichting Pop Nederland (a center for the promotion of Dutch popular music), and scorned the suggestion that their music should compete for government funding ‘with the jogging track, and the old ladies’ book club’.3 Dutch post-punk never fully escaped the underground circuit, both in the 1  G.M.  Cartwright, ‘Interview with Wally van Middendorp’, Different for Grils no. 2 (1980), 10. 2  R. Foster, ‘Digging Up Dutch Undergrounds – An Interview with Rob Scholte – artist – and of The Young Lions and Suspect’, Luifabriek, http://luifabriek.com/2014/05/digging-dutch-undergrounds-interview-rob-scholte-artist-young-lions-suspect (accessed June 11, 2018). 3  P.L.  Van Elderen, ‘Pop and Government Policy in the Netherlands’ in S.  Frith (Ed.), World Music, Politics, and Social Change, Papers from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1989), 190–197, 197.

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Netherlands and abroad. During the years that followed, many of the scene’s musicians abandoned pop music and found lasting success through other cultural enterprises. Both Soviet Sex’s Peter Klashorst and The Young Lions’ Rob Scholte enjoyed international fame as painters. Others, such as Minny Pops’ Wally van Middendorp and Gerard Walhof, forged careers in journalism and management roles in the mainstream popular music industry. Eventually, the narrative of Dutch post-punk seemed indistinguishable from that of the related, more visible Dutch punk and squatter movements. For nearly three decades, Dutch post-punk found itself moored in a subcultural bywater, a fascinating musical diversion in the wider story of an era full of angst-ridden socio-cultural adjustments, doom-mongering music and economic uncertainty.

The Legacy and ‘Characteristics’ of Dutch Post-Punk Sporadic attempts by some original actors to reignite interest in Dutch post-punk have coincided with anniversaries and technological developments. These initiatives often took the form of low-key print interviews or limited reissue releases of LPs on CD format. A concerted and more successful attempt to create a more lasting reappraisal was made in 2011, roughly thirty years after Dutch post-punk reached its creative highwater mark. This activity was based in the main around short reformation tours alongside young Dutch bands with ‘post-punk attitudes’ (namely, the Minny Pops reformation and ‘Post-Ultra’ mini tours in the UK and the Netherlands in the spring of 2012), broadcasts, limited edition print media publications and LP reissues. It was fueled in part by the growing power of the internet as a medium to spread information, but also sprang from a desire to take advantage of two wider cultural developments. The first of these was the decision of the Amsterdam publishing house Lebowski to publish a series of titles focusing on forgotten or obscure aspects of the Netherlands’ countercultural history of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Lebowski’s titles were published between 2010 and 2012 and fell into two broad categories: biographies and cultural reminiscences, written by original punk or post-punk actors such as Harold Schellinx and Dirk Polak4; and 4  H. Schellinx, Ultra. Opkomst en Ondergang van de Ultramodernen. Een Unieke Nederlandse Muziekstroming (1978–1983) (Amsterdam: Lebowski, 2012); D. Polak, Mecano. Een Muzikaal Egodocument (Amsterdam: Lebowski, 2011).

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popular histories written by academics and journalists, specifically Leonor Jonker and Martijn Haas, both of whom enjoyed access to archival materials.5 The second development was the decision by the Utrecht Centraal Museum to organize one of the first major retrospectives on the era, entitled God Save the Queen: Kunst, Kraak, Punk 1977–1984. The exhibition ran from March 3 to June 10, 2012. Although the exhibition and the mini-tours were nationally advertised events and generated wide media coverage, it is mainly the Lebowski titles that have shaped Dutch post-punk’s current narrative, for four reasons. Firstly, the decision of the Centraal Museum to emphasize the ubiquitousness of Anglo-American pop culture in the Dutch cultural landscape of the era cemented an unspoken consensus that Dutch post-punk—or Dutch punk for that matter—could not benefit from a wholly autonomous reappraisal. The museum set the tone by basing the name of their retrospective around the slogan ‘God Save the Queen’, the title of the second single by British punk band, The Sex Pistols. This decision was mirrored in the choice of exhibits (e.g. Keith Haring paintings, the use of snippets of British punk music) which—though correctly highlighting the internationalist nature of Dutch punk and post-punk’s influences—gave the impression that local manifestations of the subculture were driven by foreign ‘parent’ subcultures, instead of having their own characteristics and being engaged in an ongoing cultural exchange. Secondly, the exhibition’s understandable wish to serve as an all-embracing, entry-level overview for its public also underplayed deeper engagements with specific subcultures such as post-punk. The third reason was a simple matter of one medium’s staying power over the other. Lebowski’s titles were available long after the tours had packed up and the exhibition had closed its doors. The titles serve as a source of reference that boasts greater availability, shelf life and scope than an exhibition catalogue, or the fleeting memory of a gig. Fourthly, Lebowski’s titles served as the first public attempt—outside of a tiny number of internet articles and texts—to actively record the memories of the Dutch post-punks themselves, such as those of punk producer and singer of Mecano, Dirk Polak, and one of the founders of the Ultra scene, Harold Schellinx. Additions to this list were three biographies by 5  L. Jonker, No Future Nu. Punk in Nederland 1977–2012 (Amsterdam: Lebowski, 2012); M.  Haas, Bibikov for President. Politiek, Poëzie & Performance 1981–1982 (Amsterdam: Lebowski, 2012); Ibid., Dr. Rat. Godfather van de Nederlandse Graffiti (Amsterdam: Lebowski, 2011); Ibid., SKG (Amsterdam: Lebowski, 2010).

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journalist Martijn Haas about figures who often worked with the post-­ punks: the politician and street poet Mike Bibikov, the graffiti artist Ivar Vičs, aka Dr. Rat, and punk artists Erik Hobijn and Jos Alderse Baas.6 If a mythological thread could be found in any of these titles, it would be in Schellinx’s book, which documents the rise and fall of Dutch post-­ punk’s Ultra scene in some detail. A sprawling, highly personal work that flits between a disconnected set of personal reminiscences, the book is nevertheless useful in that it cements the origin myth of Dutch post-punk as an undervalued music scene, as seen earlier in Wally Van Middendorp’s interview. This myth gradually takes shape through character sketches, highly entertaining personal vignettes, diary jottings and press cuttings of the time, as well as interviews and reflections on the era with his old musical peers. By way of confirmation, Schellinx also points to a number of factors that, in his opinion, drove Dutch post-punk’s rise and fall, character and modus operandi. According to him, Dutch post-punk was essentially amateur in character. Schellinx argues that many of his peers did not see music as a career, but rather as the era’s most logical, ‘popular’ medium for expressing the Zeitgeist.7 Highbrow in nature, the post-punks also often professed an amateur, ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ approach and a healthy disdain for many aspects of mainstream popular culture. This attitude was inspired by an adoption of punk’s iconoclastic, do-it-yourself attitude and the Dutch squatting movement’s no-nonsense appropriation of spaces for independent socio-cultural activities. Schellinx successfully explains both these points through examples of the easy adoption and abandonment of music as a medium. A third factor was a latent internationalism, seen in the many instances of international exchange between like-minded artists and the strong interest in Anglo-American, and West-German post-punk scenes. Finally, and most strikingly, he highlights that Dutch post-punk was a multidisciplinary phenomenon. Artists formed bands and became club and gallery owners, or set up underground television stations as outlets for their music. For their part, many post-punk musicians, such as Schellinx himself, tried their hand at journalism on the scene’s primary outlet, Vinyl magazine. The origin myth posited earlier, that of Dutch post-punk as an undervalued music scene, is best seen by employing the third of these factors, its internationalism. Through the use of personal remembrances, Schellinx points to the many, often fruitful musical collaborations between Dutch 6 7

 Ibid.  Schellinx, Ultra.

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musicians and their foreign peers in America and the United Kingdom, as well as the often laudatory foreign press reports from influential journalists such as Paul Morley. These examples are contrasted with Dutch press quotes of the time, which often express denigratory attitudes to the post-­ punks’ music. Schellinx goes further at one point, creating what is effectively a mnemonic set-piece; claiming that the eventual plaudits meted out by the Dutch music press—specifically in a feature on Ultra in the important Dutch music journal Oor in early 1981—were driven more by a wish not to miss the boat on a scene that had already received attention from the enormously influential British paper, New Musical Express (NME), than by a genuine interest for the scene itself. Underscoring the idea that Dutch post-punk bands were often written about with ‘a denigrating sneer’,8 Schellinx interrogates Oor’s writer Paul Evers over his motives. Evers is keen to defend himself some thirty years after the event, denying that NME’s piece formed the inspiration for his own, something that Schellinx is reluctant to fully accept. It seems then, as well as historically competing with ‘the jogging track, and the old ladies’ book club’, those involved with the Dutch post-punk scene currently have to process different, often very personal reactions to very scattered and limited resources and long-restrained memories; ones that have not had the chance or time to be reevaluated historically. When a published text from an accepted and widely distributed source provides some insight on this scene, it is naturally fought over. In this light, Schellinx and Evers’s debate can be seen as a retrospective contrast of two individuals’ memories around two particular source texts, where the act of remembering and documenting (here, a retrospective debate on the Dutch post-punks being undervalued in the Netherlands) have formed into a public performance in a third, Schellinx’s memoir. Unsurprisingly the spark to justify the myth of ‘underevaluation’ is still the international (and wider read) source text: Andy Gill’s NME piece from 1980.9 Despite this text’s many faults (also pointed out by Schellinx), the very fact it is a British appraisal still gives a credence in Schellinx’s eyes that more local evaluations cannot give. We can also note the Dutch post-punks’ continued use of positive source material from one powerful established music industry (here the British) to justify against another (the Dutch), showing a willingness to be courted and feted by the established music industry at large. 8 9

 Schellinx, Ultra, 242.  Quoted in Schellinx, Ultra, 128.

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Researching Dutch Post-Punk Myths in an International Context Despite the intriguing claims made by Schellinx, his book can only be used as a starting point for research. Frustratingly, the other titles in Lebowski’s series (Haas, Jonker, Polak) can only add color and insight. None of them plot a wider narrative of Dutch post-punk, nor pinpoint the factors that drive the nascent mythological aspects of the scene as claimed by Schellinx. The ‘origin myth’ propounded by Schellinx and a number of others should be questioned, however. Firstly, because other, unpublished, remembrances from key scene actors of the time could point to a more harmonious working relationship between the Dutch post-punks and the mainstream media. An example comes from Eindhoven’s thriving post-­ punk scene, courtesy of Effenaar booker and Bullit record shop worker, Carlos van Hijfte. In an interview with the author, Van Hijfte was keen to stress the openness of the Eindhoven post-punks toward those higher up in the Dutch music and media business: We didn’t hate any of those people. I don’t remember any opposition that way. There were the [public TV broadcasting associations] VPRO and VARA and the [newspaper] Volkskrant. If they came by we were happy. And if it was a cool guy or a girl they could be part of our scene. As for the records we liked, some were on majors very quickly. We just liked the people if they were nice.

Secondly, researching Dutch post-punk involves documenting a number of relatively small and scattered scenes in towns and cities such as Venlo, Haarlem and ’s-Hertogenbosch; scenes that often had little contact with each other. The influential Nijmegen band Mekannik Kommmando later admitted they felt alone ‘on their own little island’ and only later made acquaintance with the scene they soon came to represent.10 Thirdly, the relatively recent nature of the events has meant that previously ignored or undervalued resources (such as old ticket stubs, posters, jottings, bootlegs or personal tape recordings, company reports and magazine articles) are increasingly seen as sources to be historically evaluated in a wider context, rather than a set of props for disparate memories (initially set down in popular literature in a specific genre, here pop culture writing), of high  Idem, 257.

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profile, or self-appointed scene actors. Fourthly and related, it is worth remembering that old texts are often used as totemistic objects to prove or set an ‘origin myth’, such as Andy Gill’s piece in the NME. This is not to accuse Schellinx’s report as essentially untrue, but rather to emphasize that it is one voice among others. Because of the paucity and tessellate nature of the information, it is necessary to look further afield to find context for Dutch post-punk’s origin myths. European post-punk is a well-documented movement and recently became a fashionable subject for academic study. The British post-punk movement, for example, boasts a considerable body of academic and popular literature. A key text is Simon Reynolds’ seminal and near-exhaustive overview of British post-punk— Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978–84. Two aspects from his work are of special use to research into Dutch post-punk. The first is Reynolds’ boldness in claiming the central position of the British in the international post-punk scene. Not that I’m especially patriotic or anything, but it’s also striking how both the sixties and the post-punk movement were periods during which Britannia ruled the pop waves.11

The boldness of this statement and the paraphrasing of the song Rule Britannia owe something to Reynolds’ view of British pop music in that period as extraordinary: equal in quality and range to the material produced in another fabled era of British pop music history, 1963–1967. Placing this premise on a global level hints at Reynolds’ faith in the perceived power of Britain’s position as a main producer of popular and challenging music in the dominant Anglo-American music market. Secondly, Reynolds clearly acknowledges that cultural transfer was vital in shaping British post-punk music, and cementing its international credentials. The book is littered with examples of how other countries fueled the British post-punk fire. British post-punk is thus seen as a ‘metamusical’ movement that looked to Jamaica, other European countries, and the more perverse, non-blues elements of the American musical lexicon.12 The debt many British acts owed to Europe is seen in passages such as the following:

11  S. Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978–84 (Faber & Faber: London, 2005), x. 12  Idem, xxvi.

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For many of the post-punk persuasion, 1977’s most significant singles weren’t ‘White Riot’ or ‘God Save the Queen’, but ‘Trans-Europe Express’, a metronomic, metal-on-metal threnody for the industrial era by the German band Kraftwerk, and Donna Summer’s Eurodisco smash ‘I Feel Love’, made almost entirely from synthetic sounds by producer Giorgio Moroder, an Italian based in Munich. Moroder’s electronic disco and Kraftwerk’s serene synthpop conjured glistening visions of the Neu Europa – modern, forward-­ looking, and pristinely post-rock in the sense of having virtually no debts to American music.13

These two quotes (one used as contrast, one as confirmatory) support the origin myth of Dutch post-punk as an undervalued music in its own land, one that nevertheless enjoyed significant international cultural collaboration and approbation. Reynolds’ sweeping statement that British music ruled the waves betrays a cultural confidence entirely lacking in Schellinx’s narrative. Dutch bands could never enjoy such a historical ‘birth right’. Yet Reynolds’ argument for British post-punk’s enrichment through cultural transfer chimes with Schellinx’s descriptions of the internationalist bent of Dutch post-punk.

Myth and Memory: Working With Scene Actors and Primary Sources A comparison of Reynolds and Schellinx seems to affirm Dutch post-­punk’s undervaluation, but only provides limited information. Two paths are open to those who wish to further reconstruct and analyze Dutch post-punk and its surrounding myths. The first is analyzing musical magazines, such as the Dutch post-punk Vinyl magazine, and British fanzines such as Manchester’s City Fun, Sheffield’s Difficult for Grils, as well as the then all-powerful British music press, such as Sounds and the New Musical Express. In practice, however, such an endeavor runs the risk of highlighting the contrasts between the Dutch and British music press, while these newspapers tended to focus on the spectacular and thus contribute to scene’s myths rather than debunking them. The second path is interviews with former Dutch post-punks, but this source, too, suffers from biases and the tendency to create myths rather than deconstruct them. Given the right analytical tools and approaches, both paths however offer ways to both reconstruct and evaluate the idea of Dutch post-punk as an undervalued music.  Idem, xxii.

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Primary Sources Primary source material consists of diverse, often scattered documentary evidence such as listings, adverts, posters, magazine reviews, online reappraisals, museum exhibitions or fanzine interviews. Assessing how a subculture saw itself through an analysis of original material requires constant vigilance. After all, not all contemporary primary source material should be taken as literal or reliable. Spelling mistakes or glitches created by reproduction processes, (long forgotten) personal agendas and misunderstandings, as well as a lack of knowledge about foreign or new music (common in a pre-internet age), should all be taken into account. It is important to recognize that reports could have been driven by fleeting or vague personal impressions, but in the present work to solidify into a trope or an argument. In this regard, it is also worth remembering that pop music journalists often take polemical, or overtly personal standpoints that are in themselves there to shock or provoke, or to promote a sense of the reviewer’s self over the subject they report on. An example can be seen with Dutch writer Alfred Bos, whose review in Oor of a Plurex Records label night on July 11, 1979, in the Paradiso Amsterdam, concentrates equally on his negative reactions to the music and his remedy in the pub afterward, music that wanted him to ‘get as drunk as soon as possible’.14 Analyzing a report on the Dutch post-punk scene by the British journalist Andy Gill for the New Musical Express illustrates the issue at hand. Gill visited key members of the Ultra scene in Amsterdam during 1980 and subsequently wrote an article entitled, ‘Why Not To Hate the Dutch’. The conclusion gives an impression of the rabble-rousing, broad-brush nature of the piece, which is clearly written as a polemic that looks to mythologize a previously obscure scene. I love the Dutch; I love them more than money. So why do we ignore their rock scene and think their names are funny? I like the Dutch; I like them more than my cat. And they’ve developed a rock scene that’s scaling the heights (even if their country is flat). I love the Dutch hurrah for the orange white and green! […] The six bands covered here  – and there are more besides like Scratz, Tox Modell and Nasmak – are just as good as our beloved Anglo-American outfits but suffer from a national inferiority complex beyond their control. There’s definitely something happening in Holland, but whether the Dutch realise it is another matter.15  Quoted in Schellinx, Ultra, 128.  Idem, 229.

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The passage is undoubtedly useful as both a potential origin myth and as a marker of how Dutch post-punk music was seen by its international peers. Gill’s piece, however, needs careful scrutiny in weeding out the inaccuracies from the (many) genuine insights that provide historical value. Obvious is, for example, the national stereotyping in this text, as well as the misspelling of the band Scratch’s name as Scratz, and Gill’s mistaken belief that the Dutch flag is orange, white and green. But what are the implications for presenting such a piece as convincing evidence of a myth? Gill’s quote is also used in Schellinx’s book as evidence that it took a British article to elicit praise from the Dutch press for its homegrown music. Quoting the text thus runs the risk of merely confirming Schellinx’s suspicions that Dutch post-punks felt undervalued. If anything, Gill over-values and mythologizes what he finds in his tour report. Gill’s claim that Dutch post-punk bands suffer ‘from a national inferiority complex beyond their control’ may well be a clever educated guess on his behalf. Further, other examples of British writing on Dutch post-punk show a disinterest that undermines Gill’s polemical myth-­ making, such as the Manchester fanzine City Fun spelling Minny Pops’ name ‘The Minipops’, in a review from 1980.16 The Jaarverslagen (Year Reports) of Eindhoven’s famous Effenaar club from 1979 to 1981 may seem to support the myth as well, but again require intense scrutiny. The reports often mention international names that employ Dutch bands as support acts. This may lead one to conclude that Dutch post-punk bands were irrevocably cast as performing a secondary role to their international peers. However, the reports also mention well-attended nights headlined by popular Dutch post-punk acts such as Mecano and The Tapes.17 Clearly, then, some Dutch bands did experience considerable instances of appreciation. The Dutch magazine Vinyl offers another way of questioning the myth of Dutch post-punk’s undervaluation. The magazine was formed and staffed by a number of Dutch post-punk musicians and created to be avowedly pro-Dutch post-punk music. Studying a select number of early Vinyl magazines, however, reveals that the publication rarely—if ever— published polemical pieces in the manner of Gill’s article. Rather, Vinyl was interested in a more academic, highbrow approach to chronicling the  Anon, ‘Near Riot At Joy Division Masquerade’, City Fun no. 22 (April 1980), 2.  Author’s archive, ‘Bijlage A.1. Konserten’, Inhoudelijk Verslag Open jongerencentrum De Effenaar 1979 1980 1981, 26. 16 17

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underground music of the day. Only a handful of articles stood out as having any resemblance to ‘Why Not To Hate the Dutch’ in terms of stating a strong personal opinion to promote the scene’s nascent mythology: one being a tour report from Issue 2, ‘Minny Pops in Amerika. Jetlag en kou’ (Minny Pops in America. Jetlag and Cold),18 dealing with the Amsterdam band Minny Pops’ treatment in the American press, and the other an opinion piece in Issue 8, ‘Invalshoek’ (here best translated as ‘Point of View’), written by the lead singer of Mecano and Torso label boss, Dirk Polak.19 These pieces in part confirm the differences between Gill’s piece and Vinyl’s more neutral tone. Interviews With Scene Actors While dealing with interviews, it is important to note that the myths or myth-making that are pushed through Oral History interviewing need not be stumbling blocks to effective research. Rather, understanding the processes that drive the formation of myths can be of considerable use to a researcher. A popular music scene—and the memories it invokes—acts as a continually evolving resource for the original actors. Myths are, in this context, flexible rather than hidebound. Tia DeNora,20 Andy Bennett21 and Trever Hagen22 see interviews as expressing inherent physical or spatial properties that situate interview material and underline its ‘human’ nature. DeNora sees interviews as opportunities for people to explain how they physically or emotionally respond to music in their daily lives.23 Dutch post-punk’s myth as an undervalued music could be determined through the interviewees’ current, (daily) descriptions of what happened, or recollections of how material circumstances or geographies changed; and how an interviewee reacted to these changes. Placing the interview in a ‘new’ space (effectively set against a recollection of a past time) can alter perceptions, and lead to a certain amount of revisionism. However, this  Vinyl no. 2 (March 1981).  Vinyl no. 8 (November 1981). 20  T. DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000). 21  A.  Bennett, ‘Popular Music, Cultural Memory and Everyday Aesthetics’ in E.  De La Fuente and P.  Murphy (eds.), Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music (Brill: Leiden, 2010), 243–262. 22  T. Hagen, ‘Converging on Generation: Musicking in Normalized Czechoslovakia’, East Central Europe vol. 38 (2011) no. 2–3, 307–335. 23  T. DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 46–74. 18 19

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r­ einvention may be a valid part of the process. Hagen’s appropriation of Christopher Small’s term ‘musicking’24 can provide the key to how Dutch post-punks presented their memories. Hagen states that a modern appreciation of past events need not be a matter for undue concern; the ‘new interview space’ is dynamic; a ‘convergence zone, wherein the performance and rehearsal of knowledge along sociobiographical lines’ allows an interviewee to create their own, flexible, ‘cultural resource’.25 Additionally, Bennett states that the ‘cultural memory’ of a scene or era is something that can alter in meaning over time, whether through interviews or new re-enactments: [C]ultural memory, rather than presenting a fixed, intangible point in a collectively articulated past, is continually re-presented through its embeddedness in those everyday artefacts through which individuals re-produce their collective cultural selves in the present.26

Bennett’s work on how the process of aging affects lifestyle theory sheds important light on how memories of a scene or music can bring both new insights on the role of actors in presenting those memories, and how a myth can be reappraised: [A]geing and biography, together with associated processes of remembering and critical reflection must now be considered key elements in an analysis and interpretation of popular music’s social and cultural meaning.27

These approaches allow the primary source material to be evaluated against a scene actor’s performance of his/her memories. In my own study of Dutch post-punk, for instance, I was often conscious that many of the post-punks performed a set of memories, some rehearsed, others triggered by my questions. The most notable ‘cultural resource’ on show was the story told by Mecano singer Dirk Polak about the disagreements around a sampler release on his record label Torso, concerning four Nijmegen bands: Mekanik Kommando, Bazooka, Vice and Das Wezen. During the interview, the author was aware that this story had been previously 24  C.  Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Wesleyan University Press: Middletown CT, 1998). 25  Hagen, ‘Converging on Generation’, 311–312. 26  Bennett, ‘Popular Music, Cultural Memory and Everyday Aesthetics’, 262. 27  Ibid., 245.

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performed in Harold Schellinx’s book. The transcript is taken from my interview with Polak: [Polak] So I went to them and I said, okay so you’re also artists and designers. What do you think of the offer to make a double album, so all of the bands have one side, so you can make a beautiful booklet in full color, because I have to press two pieces of vinyl instead of four, so we can make a nice booklet? (Dirk pauses, leans forward and, with sotto voce) And they didn’t want it, no, ‘because I want my own record’. And I said even when the cover is much less interesting in colouring or… ‘oh yeah, because I want my own record’… …Now if you had a proposal in England to a band and you say okay we make a side with twelve songs on it and you can have three minutes, they’d kill themselves to get on the album! And here it’s ‘oh no otherwise we don’t want it’. And this is a sort of spoiled way of thinking about these things.28

Although Polak re-performed a doubtless often-told myth, the memory of his thwarted desire (effectively to create a marketing strategy similar to that of Factory Communications for the four bands) brought Bennett’s notion of ‘critical reflection’ into focus. Polak’s critique of the Dutch character in relation to the British when making a cultural statement through pop music was telling, and useful in highlighting new understandings of Dutch post-punk as an undervalued music. Polak effectively accuses Dutch post-punk musicians of undervaluing themselves in diffidently refusing to play the game of Frith’s ‘politics of pop’. Revisiting Polak’s column in Issue 8 of Vinyl magazine, the author noted Polak berating the solitary, singular, (mythologically) counterproductive working methods of Dutch artists. In other cases, interview material revealed a number of recurring topics that further refined or fleshed out Schellinx’s observances. Four broad themes emerge: descriptions of the scene; its own Dutch identity and legacy; contacts with, and perceptions of, music scenes abroad; and relationships with the Dutch music industry. When describing the scene, interviewees stressed three further elements as integral to an understanding of its inception and modus operandi: the art school connection; the 28  R.  Foster, ‘Digging Up Dutch Undergrounds  – An Interview with Dirk Polak of Mecano’, Luifabriek, http://luifabriek.com/2014/02/digging-dutch-undergroundsinterview-dirk-polak-mecano (accessed June 11, 2018).

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smallness and local nature of the scenes; and finally a cussed, do-it-yourself mentality in doing exactly what they wanted—born of its connections with the squatting and punk movements. All were elements that could be identified as ones that fed into the broader myth of Dutch post-punk as an undervalued scene. A good summation of the elements that present Dutch post-punk as an undervalued music can be found in the author’s interview with Rob Scholte, singer in The Young Lions and later a celebrated international painter. Scholte claims that Ultra consisted of ‘failed bands’ with no commercial nous or initiative, with members who attended art schools (in Scholte’s memory his colleagues at the Rietveld Academy), who utilized squatted places to rehearse their ‘conceptual’ music. Bands, moreover, who found punk ‘too simplistic’ but who were ‘totally outside the reference system’ of the Dutch musical consensus.29 And we were between everything and we were scandalous! Everything we did caused concern amongst critics and whatever public we had. […] The public was massaged by the [conventional and streamlined] Volendam sound, and […] they were getting used to punk, but to have a different approach? That was not welcomed. I remember that we had the public throwing beer or climbing onstage or trying to break the microphone, things like that. Wherever we went, there was always some controversy.30

Elsewhere, Scholte seems to echo Polak’s diatribe about Dutch post-­ punk’s essential diffidence in a wider reflection about the Dutch character. [We] have a sort of complex about being small. It’s that whole thing about a small guy trying to compete with the big guys and he knows he’s the small guy. And this self-image is harmful. On one side it is completely overloaded and on the other side we see ourselves as very unimportant. It’s strange.31

Conclusion This chapter has tried to suggest profitable strategies when defining the myths central to an under-researched music scene, here Dutch postpunk. How, for instance, do researchers deal with a historiographical  Idem.  Idem. 31  Idem. 29 30

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landscape where veteran scene actors finally have an opportunity to state their case? The mythology of popular music often needs a wider theoretical and historical framework to counter what can be the product of hearsay, fading memory, personal vendettas or industry intrigues. Reconstructing such under-researched scenes, therefore, involves a lengthy process of evaluating few available sources that initially form the foundation of the research, such as interview material and documenting primary sources, a process that becomes more complicated as more evidence is gathered. Often there is little academic literature to fall back on, and picking a suitable theoretical and historiographical approach can therefore be problematic. Paradoxically this initial lack of material—and the resultant vagaries around collating evidence from primary sources and interviews—allows the researcher the freedom to situate an unexplored subject in the manner they see fit. When embarking on such a project it is firstly vital to keep a clear perspective on why the subject was chosen (though this aspect—ideally employed as a useful starting point for research—is often overlooked as work proceeds). My own research into the Dutch postpunk continually returned a seemingly simple question, often readdressed or reevaluated according to new evidence: Why (in comparison with other European post-punk scenes) did Dutch post-punk music have no sense of legacy or identity in its native land? Secondly, any material collected must undergo a thorough set of evaluations. These can be of the researcher’s choosing—and ideally driven by the nascent narrative created from the reasons for research—but should involve questions pertaining to who is supplying the material, what role did it originally, and subsequently, play, and why has it been offered to the researcher. Although this approach may sound unnecessarily simplistic, it gives the collected material a certain agency and freshness. In short, the researcher should adopt a procedure that allows new source material to ‘display itself ’ in the round. This is vital with a subject such as Dutch post-punk where material is limited to a few specifics, such as the monthly magazine initially dedicated to documenting Dutch post-­ punk activity, Vinyl, which ran from December 1980 to February 1988. Further, it is worth remembering that all material gathered has worth. Overlooked matters like a venue’s year reports, ticket stubs, posters (and the posters’ designers) can often bring unexpected insights.

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Finally, a researcher should be aware that new or previously unsolicited source material often displays a strong personal quality. When sifting through the idiosyncratic, often extremely personal nature of material thrown up by Dutch post-punk, specifically the evidence garnered from scene actors, research can be aided by the work of Hagen and Bennett, who encourage a researcher to approach acts of remembrance in a manner that bypasses qualitative or populist assumptions around a subculture’s legacy or cultural narrative.

SECTION V

Subcultural Legacies: Global Spread and Adoption

What happens when subcultures with local roots gain a global audience, and subcultural actors need to mediate between the local and the global aspects of ‘their’ subculture? The two closing chapters of this volume discuss the role of the local and the global in subcultures, especially in the spread and adoption of their myths and memories. In doing so, they show that space, too, can become an aspect of subcultural myths. Igor Johannsen investigates how the idea of hip hop being the voice of marginalized communities was embraced and reenergized by Arabic rappers supporting the protests during the Arab Spring of 2011. Illustrative of this practice was the claim of the rapper collective Arabian Knigthz that ‘hip hop ain’t dead, it never died, it just moved to the Middle East, where the struggle is still alive’. Both rappers and observers came to see Arab hip hop as essentially coming from a similar background as US American hip hop from the 1970s. Such an interpretative framework, however, obscures rather than elucidates the real dynamics and character of Arab hip hop, and Johannsen states: ‘Seeing hip hop as a potent cultural weapon of the weak is an unconscious (or conscious) decision which highlights specific aspects of the culture, to the detriment of others’. Proper analysis of the Arab hip hop scene requires a self-reflective attitude of researchers, an awareness of the contents and workings of subcultural myths, and the countering of essentializing narratives. Thierry P. F. Verburgh examines how the Berlin neighborhood of eastern Kreuzberg has come to be seen by global audiences as the ultimate  youth culture hotspot. In order to explain this, he combines the concepts of sacralization and canonization with that of  preference

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construction, stating: ‘[P]references are constructed when people choose one representation over others as more exceptional or true, and subsequently become invested in it’. This processing of singling out, or preferring, leads to mythification. Verburgh subsequently analyzes the interaction between the press, tourism industry, cultural output, and personal recollections of people like  tourists in order to reconstruct how this process unfolded in eastern Kreuzberg, and with what results. Again, the focus lies not on the question if the myth is true, but how it comes to be and how it develops over time. The central concepts of both chapters, essentialization and preference construction, have clear overlaps and play a central role in myth-making. Together, the chapters provide different ways to introduce space and the global spread of mythical images, ideas, and memories into the research of subcultural myths.

CHAPTER 12

Imagining and Performing Marginalization: Hip Hop and the Arab Spring of 2011 Igor Johannsen

Introduction The mythology of the starving artist gets passed around and handed down like a spliff at a gangsta party, and at the end of the night, everybody is high on the same bullshit. Rha Goddess1

Of the many faces and identities that are repeatedly ascribed to the cultural practices of hip hop, one of the most prominent is represented by its image as belonging to—and coming from—the politically, socially, and economically marginalized black youth in the USA. Hip hop and its associated elements (rapping, DJ’ing, graffiti, breakdance) are regularly described or  R. Goddess, ‘Scarcity and Exploitation: The Myth and Reality of the Struggling Hip-Hop Artist’ in J. Chang (ed.), Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 340–348, 343. 1

I. Johannsen (*) Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS), University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_12

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perceived as an avenue for expressing discontent from the margins, to— quite literally—speak ‘truth to power’. The very genesis of hip hop is in these cases traced back to the socio-economically dire situation that black urban neighborhoods faced during the 1970s in the USA. It is assumed that hip hop originated from the need to find a means to express discontent and reflect on the causes and possible solutions to this situation. Thus, hip hop is usually understood as a principally ‘black’ culture which signifies not only the fact that hip hop originated from a ‘black’ environment but also from a corresponding position of societal marginalization. This narrative of marginalization represents one of the central myths of hip hop culture. Most historiographies of hip hop present hip hop as an empowering and socially integrating set of practices that is capable of reducing tensions and infighting between marginalized groups, and provide them with cultural ‘weaponry’ to engage with the powers that be. Scholarly and journalistic works by Jeff Chang, Sohail Daulatzai, Sujatha Fernandes, and Robin Wright reiterate this observation or focus on it in disregard of the vast cultural production in hip hop that contradicts this assumption.2 During the last few decades, this image and narrative of marginalization has grown to mythical proportions. The global success of hip hop, for example, is often explained by it, arguing that marginalized groups around the world appropriated hip hop to articulate their grievances.3 However, as we will see, it is often overlooked—or passed without mention—that hip hop started out as a party, not as an outright protest. As hip hop encompasses many other characteristics to different people, it is notable that this essentialization of hip hop as a voice for marginalization dominates the image of what this youth culture entails. One of the more recent instances in which hip hop again came to be seen as not merely an aesthetic phenomenon with limited political and social overtones, but rather as the opposite of this, consists of the popular uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2010–2012, commonly referred to as the Arab Spring. Beginning in Tunisia, mass demonstrations unfolded in several countries (including Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Bahrain), in some cases even leading to the deposing of presidents and the fall of  Titles of these authors will be referred to in the next pages.  See for example T.  Mitchell (ed.), Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop outside the USA (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001). This volume entails essays dealing with hip hop communities in Europe and Asia. A central part of the analyses consists of the observation that these communities use hip hop to oppose institutional forms of oppression. 2 3

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regimes. The demographics of these countries reveal a considerable youth-­ bulge, thus lending credibility to the claim that the uprisings were initiated and sustained by younger generations. In reality, however, the demonstrations involved broad sections of the population, from all age-­ cohorts, while the security forces opposing the protestors consisted mainly of young men. Youth, then, cannot be located squarely on the side of the revolutionaries. Nonetheless, the impression that youths played a central role in the uprisings led many observers to pay special attention to local popular culture, because they interpreted the latter as the authentic cultural expression—that is, the ‘voice’—of young people. Only in Tunisia did the wave of mass protest herald a considerable transformation of the political constitution. In the other countries, the situation returned more or less to its pre-Arab Spring status quo. Although the personal composition of the leadership may have changed, the institutional framework remained roughly the same. In countries like Syria and Libya, the uprisings even led to (civil) wars and left societies and state apparatuses devastated. Egypt, which through the deposition of the longtime President Husni Mubarak and the iconic protests on Tahrir Square attained a sort of model status, currently suffers even more than before from the authoritarian politics of President Sisi and his regime. Others still, like Morocco, Algeria, or Jordan, weathered the storm of uprisings in the region almost unchanged. Since 2011 and until this day, artists in and from the region contributed to the ways in which socio-political issues were discussed—issues that were decisive in causing the uprisings and their aftermaths. Viewing hip hop as particularly suitable for the articulation of political criticism and resistance, a great mass of Western media and scholarship celebrated these artists not only as authentic voices but also as reliable sources—as spokespersons for their generation. The myth of hip hop as a mouthpiece of the marginalized thus manifested itself again—albeit in a wholly new context. Undoubtedly, popular cultural expressions, music, and iconography have had an impact on the uprisings. Testimonies of protesters and recordings of protests illustrate this. Even so, I argue that the myth of hip hop as a form of political and social criticism originating ‘from below’ has distorted many observations and analyses. By celebrating this type of cultural revolutionary, decisive questions were left unanswered: What is the social and economic status of these artists in their society? Why were there no uprisings in the countries of the region with the biggest market for hip hop, that is, Morocco and Algeria?

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In this chapter I will, first, discuss how this myth of hip hop was and is re-presented and performed by the Arab hip hop community during and after the so-called Arab Spring of 2010–2012, and to what end. Next to artists from the region, I will examine artists who reside in some form of exile or were raised abroad but identify as Arab. The analysis consists of lyrical and aesthetic examples that exemplify the notion of hip hop as a means to express dissent and challenge the political hegemony of the government. Secondly, I will show how the image of the rapper as revolutionary was perceived and significantly amplified by media-outlets catering to Western audiences. Finally, I will discuss how rap and hip hop during and after the Arab Spring was assessed in scholarly treatments. Running through my argument is the claim that quasi-natural dichotomies and oppositions are instrumental to the (re-)creation of subcultural myths. Showing how such dichotomies are central to many approaches to cultural theory and cultural studies makes it easier to comprehend why and how the binary opposition between marginalization or resistance on the one hand and oppression or hegemonic force on the other is so appealing to observers of hip hop and, indeed, popular culture in general.

The Myth of Marginality: Hip Hop as the Voice of the Voiceless Being perceived as a principally black culture, hip hop is particularly connected to people identifying as black in the USA in the last third of the twentieth century. By that, it is understood, as Tricia Rose states, as […] an Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African-American and Caribbean history, identity and community.4

With the globalization of hip hop, this identification of hip hop as an essentially black culture was imitated, indigenized, altered, or discarded by local hip hop communities around the world. How and in what way the blackness of hip hop was affirmed or neglected depended very much on 4  T. Rose, ‘A Style Nobody Can Deal With: Politics, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop’ A. Ross and T. Rose (eds.), Microphone Fiends, Youth Music, Youth Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 71–88, 71.

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how the reality of being black in specific circumstances was imagined and how this enabled or prohibited an incorporation of respective normative assumptions into the local hip hop community.5 With ‘black’ being associated with the role of the underdog, rebel, organic intellectual6 and cultural revolutionary, the image of hip hop as the site where marginalized social communities actively engage in ‘speaking truth to power’ became common around the globe. Thus, H. Samy Alim claims in his treatment on hip hop language and lyricism Roc the Mic Right, that: Hip Hop Culture [sic], as evidence of Black American youth’s agency, provides global youth culture with incredible resistive potential in what has become an uncertain and unsettling geopolitical landscape.7

The normative assumption underlying hip hop’s blackness translates into a signification of dissent and resistance from a position of relative marginality. Naturally, marginalization is experienced in relation to some kind of hegemonic power structure. Thus, its invocation depends on the construction of some kind of binary opposition in which oppressor and oppressed can be easily identified. This represents, however, an aesthetic appropriation of a central arbiter of authenticity (being marginalized) that does not necessarily have to depend on its material reality, but rather on its successful performance. I argue that, as with myth—which is neither fiction nor truth and which can, in some way, rather be seen as the performative confirmation of a specific perception of history—it is more fruitful to understand authenticity not as a kind of mirror of factual reality, but rather as the performative realization of what is understood to represent authenticity. That being said, narrations of marginalization in hip hop and elsewhere may indeed be perceived as authentic, even though the narrator might not really be a victim of marginalization. Obviously, there are differing views regarding what may count as marginalization in relation to a certain hegemonic force. Especially illustrative 5  T. Swedenburg, ‘Homies in the “Hood”: Rap’s Commodification of Insubordination’, New Formations vol. 18 (1992): 53–66, 62. 6  The concept of the ‘organic intellectual’ was coined by Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks and refers to people that act as mediators, creators, and organizers in communities with specific socio-economic positionalities. See: A.  Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2005). 7  H.S. Alim, Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006), 49.

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is the aesthetic appropriation of this signification by hip hop communities in Israel and Palestine, as both claim to be marginalized. The official narrative of Israel as a tiny country and the sole democratic polity in a hostile Arab and Islamic region led rappers there to confirm and adopt this narrative through patriotic lyricism that envisions Israelis as a threatened minority.8 In Palestine and among Palestinians inside Israel, on the other hand, hip hop communities stylize themselves as inhabiting the newest incarnation of the ‘ghetto’ due to the occupation by Israeli military forces as well as their treatment as second-class citizens.9 By adopting these images, both Israelis and Palestinians often follow the general public discourse in their respective societies and the officially sanctioned narratives.10 The underlying binary opposition, however, follows in one case the regional political landscape and a strong in-group solidarity as ‘Israelis’; the other case is more concerned with an uneven power-structure that is affecting the local and the everyday by way of institutional disadvantages like surveillance, military occupation, or checkpoints. A comparable technique of performing marginality can be observed in Middle Eastern hip hop in general. Most of the successful artists in the Middle East have a relatively privileged background; they speak English fluently, they are educated at the elite institutions of their country, and they have access to digital media as well as the resources to record music and videos.11 Nonetheless, these rappers regularly invoke lyrics and ­arguments that articulate hip hop’s supposed goal of empowering the marginalized, as they reflect on their position and possibilities under autocratic regimes, as well as how to appropriate the image of hip hop and marginality from transregional discourses between the Middle East and the West, thereby succumbing to the myth of hip hop as the voice from the margins. The Egyptian rapper Romel B, for example, was quoted in the Daily News Egypt saying:

8  Subliminal and The Shadow are two of these ‘Zionist’ rappers. Especially illustrative is their song ‘Tikva’ (hope): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ruI9liCHBQ (accessed 09.02.18). 9  See the interviews with Palestinian rappers in: Y. Alsalman, The Diatribes of a Dying Tribe (Montreal: Write or Wrong, 2011), 85–101. 10  S.  Fernandes, Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (Sydney: NewSouth, 2011), 15. 11  Ibid., 8.

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Rap was originally founded to confront racism and police brutality. In Egypt we modify it to match our needs to protest oppression and economic turmoil […] Rap exists whenever exploitation and oppression exist. The violations of Mubarak’s regime made rap appealing to many giving them an outlet to protest.12

If hip hop is perceived as a culture ‘from below’, rappers are elevated to the position of champions of “the people”. Through this, the rappers come to be seen as embedded organic intellectuals who speak on behalf of those without a voice.13 Stylizing himself as a messenger, El Général, a young rapper in Tunisia, recorded a music video for his song ‘Rais LeBled’ (Head of State) at the end of 2010.14 The lyrics resemble a letter to the now exiled former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in which El Général accuses him of ignoring the dire situation of the Tunisian people. The video begins with a scene supposedly taken from a documentary or newsclip, in which Ben Ali tries to convince a boy in a school he supposedly visited to not be afraid of him while the boy looks at the camera in terror. The remaining video is set in what looks to be a bunker and merely shows the rapper and his microphone. The poor quality of the video and the fact that El Général pulls his cap down just above his eyes may be regarded as an attempt to hide his identity in order to avoid arrest. He was, indeed, shortly incarcerated after the video had garnered some attention and only released after public protests. As massive protests started shortly after, the song was heralded as the anthem of the revolution, its lyrics repeated by protestors across the country. El Général soon became the second name immediately connected to the Tunisian Revolution, the first being Mohammad Bouazizi, the street vendor whose self-immolation sparked the protests which eventually led to the deposing of the government. With popular uprisings sweeping the region, more and more artists from different hip hop communities produced songs that tackled the reasons for discontent or commented on events as they unfolded. Their lyrics ranged from specific demands and political slogans to more poetic and 12  A. Youssef, ‘On selling out, censorship, and nostalgia: Rappers reflect on society’, Daily News Egypt, 31 August 2014. https://wwww.dailynewssegypt.com/2014/08/31/sellingcensorship-nostalgia-rappers-reflect-society (accessed 09.02.18). 13  N.D.  Abrams, ‘Antonio’s b-boys: Rap, Rappers, and Gramsci’s Intellectuals’, Popular Music and Society vol. 19 (1995) no. 4, 1–19. 14  El Général, The Voice of Tunisia; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeGlJ7OouR0 (accessed 09.02.18).

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artistic deliberations on justice, freedom, and revolution. Videos of the songs carried the message with the depiction of the artist(s) as rebels or resistance fighters and were often accompanied by graphic footage of clashes between protesters and police forces. The group Arabian Knightz in Egypt, for example, teamed up with the Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour for their song ‘Prisoner’.15 The song, described by the artists themselves as a revolutionary anthem, amplified the demands of the protesters as the chorus calls for a land free of injustices and corruption, and the government is described as exploitative, violent, and indifferent toward its constituents. Thus, the chorus repeated the central chants and slogans of the revolution in Egypt. As the video shows graphic footage of street clashes and indiscriminate violence from riot police, the lyrics refer to hip hop’s myth as providing cultural weaponry for the marginalized: To the White House I creep, and yes I’m armed to the teeth, with a mic and a pen and a pad, here’s your evidence: weapons of mass destruction, Mister President.

The lyrics directly point to the perceived power of rap and hip hop to influence events on the streets. The use of footage depicting mass protests is repeated by several artists, for example by the Jordanian El Far3i in his video for the song ‘Egypt 25 Jan’.16 The short timeframe needed to produce and release a song may explain its ability to respond to ongoing events. However, it is also possible that El Far3i deliberately used digital technology to contribute to news coverage and show his viewers how the uprising was unfolding. The graphic material is carefully selected to show mainly violent acts of the police and government-paid ‘thugs’ against a peacefully protesting, diverse crowd—‘the people’—that celebrates its new-found freedom to express dissent. The antagonism between the authorities, especially the police, and hip hop communities—which influenced the public image of hip hop in the USA and elsewhere—is unsurprising with regard to the roles each of them embodied during the uprisings of 2010–2012. With the rapper being staged in an urban environment that is rather exemplary of the neglected 15  Arabian Knightz, Prisoner; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=schIdC3LdLk (accessed 09.02.18). 16  El Far3i, Egypt Jan 25; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IX7XYM9ALk (accessed 09.02.18).

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and marginalized areas of a city (concrete, rubble, waste and graffiti surrounding the artist), the rapper is depicted as a rebel, as a warrior whose weapon of choice is language; that is, poetry. All of this belongs to the aesthetic conventions of hip hop, but this does not mean that there truly is a real connection to the urban areas shown in the videos or that the representation of the artist as an organic intellectual is correct. It does, however, reinforce the notion of an inherent rebelliousness in these cultural practices. The Tunisian rapper Weld El 15 is exemplary in this regard. His videos show him either alone or accompanied by peers in different urban environments and mainly filmed from below, making the artist appear larger than life. His song ‘Boulicia Kleb’ is a direct attack on the police forces that are ridiculed as ‘dogs’ due to their actions against protesting people and their identification with the corrupt government.17 In this and other videos, the artist is directly addressing the viewer to educate him about the intricacies of the ruling system and to motivate dissent. This form of presentation, assuming the role of a lecturer with the aim of directly engaging the viewer and gaining its attention, is a common cultural practice in hip hop and feeds into the image of the artist as organic intellectual and a voice of the people. MC Amin, a rapper from the city of Mansura in Egypt, directly addresses the viewer in his video to ‘El Thawra Mostamera’18 (the revolution continues), while speaking about the events following the deposing of former President Mubarak and his position of not aligning with any force fighting to succeed him in the aftermath of 2011. He urges his generation to remember the revolution and not to succumb to the partisanship that ensued, claiming that his only allegiance is to ‘the people’. Hence, the artists in these examples view themselves as speakers for a just cause that is represented by the marginalized population under autocratic rule. As the unfolding events reverberated globally, many artists living in countries like England, the USA, and Canada produced songs and videos in support of the protests and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. For the most part, these artists identified as Arab and used this identification during the events of 2010–2012 in an attempt to broadcast their assessments and analyses to the Western public as well as to the 17  weld el 15, Boulicia Kleb; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6trgQAjby4 (accessed 09.02.18). 18  MC Amin, El Thawra Mostamera; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYNy1rA_ SsM (accessed 09.02.18).

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Middle Eastern audience as a gesture of solidarity and ‘connective marginality’.19 Again, videos used montages of clips supposedly showing aspects of the uprisings, be it clashes with the police or decisive and iconic events like mass demonstrations or the occupation of a bridge by the protesters. The image of the artist, however, is often conspicuously absent, leaving the music and the lyrics as a form of commentary on the depicted real-life events. In other cases, the artist is pictured as enmeshed with the protesters or hovering above them, chanting to and with them rally calls for revolution. In ‘#Jan25 Egypt’, several artists express their admiration for the protesters, the bravery of the people, and their feelings of solidarity.20 Thus, the description on YouTube reads: Produced by Sami Matar, a Palestinian-American composer from Southern California, and featuring the likes of Freeway, The Narcicyst, Omar Offendum, HBO Def Poet Amir Sulaiman, and Canadian R&B vocalist Ayah—this track serves as a testament to the revolution’s effect on the hearts and minds of today’s youth, and the spirit of resistance it has come to symbolize for oppressed people worldwide.

In his song ‘#Syria’, published on YouTube in March 2012, Omar Offendum, a Syrian artist living in Los Angeles, used the recorded chants of protesting masses in Syria as his main theme.21 Rapping in English and Arabic, Offendum speaks of the unification of the Syrian people against their oppressors and repeats the revolutionary rally-call ‘al-shab yurid isqat an-nizam’ (‘the people want the regime to fall’) as the refrain of his song. The video shows graphic footage of the protests and violent clashes with the security forces of the regime while Offendum himself is shown rapping to the camera and located in different urban settings. His demeanor, gestures, and expressions reinforce the lyrical content and align with the chanting of the Syrian crowds. These examples clearly show the appropriation of marginality as a defining moment in the artistic experience and practice of Arab rappers during 19  H.  Osumare, ‘Beat Streets in the Global Hood: Connective Marginalities of the Hip Hop Globe’, Journal of American Culture vol. 24 (2009) no. 1–2, 171–181. 20  Omar Offendum, The Narcicyst, Freeway, Ayah, Amir Sulaiman, #Jan25 Egypt; https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCbpiOpLwFg (accessed 09.02.18). 21  Omar Offendum, #Syria; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXjEWrhkb6g (accessed 09.02.18).

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and after the ‘Arab Spring’. It is, however, not the relative marginality experienced in one’s own life that is decisive; rather, it is the performative act of presenting oneself as a revolutionary that speaks on behalf of the marginalized.22 The signification of marginality and solidarity with the marginalized becomes the arbiter of the authentic appropriation and indigenization of hip hop. In this vein, The Narcycist claims in his video for ‘Phatwa’ that ‘Iraq is the new black’ as an example for the vilification of Arab people after 9/11.23 In the context of hip hop, this claim is understood as an indication as to who may be perceived as authentic or ‘real’ due to the prevalent idea that rapping is an expressive and lyrical practice of marginalized segments of society. The Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour understands hip hop generally as a resistant culture for, and by, oppressed people, which is why she perceives Israeli hip hop as an oxymoron.24 ‘Real hip hop’ is, for her, the exclusive domain of the oppressed. What may seem as hip hop but emanates out from the oppressor, the hegemon or ruling elite, is, according to this understanding, mere imitation and another wicked tool to control the masses and to avert their rightful demands for a decent life. Thus, through cultural practice ‘history becomes nature’.25 The image of ‘hip hop’ is essentialized as an expression of specific socio-economic conditions. The affirmation of this myth through performance lays claim to the representation and relegates any diversion to be an inauthentic perversion of hip hop’s ‘true’ nature. In repeating and affirming this mythical figure, Shadia Mansour confirms a form of binary thinking that is itself central in the (re-)creation of myth and that, for some, puts the ‘popular’ in popular culture.

22  I. Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 21. 23  Narcy, Phatwa; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtoHCUMpNMY (accessed 09.02.18). By reconciling ‘Arabness’ with ‘Blackness’, Arab artists and hip hop communities position themselves as globally marginalized and, hence, ‘authentic’. A. Williams, ‘We ain’t terrorists, but we droppin’ bombs’: Language use and localization of hip hop in Egypt [MA Thesis 2009], 76. 24  Posted on https://www.facebook.com/Shadia-Mansour-35106008298/?fref=ts on 28th of April 2016. 25  R. Barthes, Mythen des Alltags (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016), 278.

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The Appeal and Threat of the Underdog: Hip Hop in Public Debates and the Media While hip hop culture was originally not solely a black project, especially given the contributions from the Latin-American hip hop communities,26 its identity as a ‘black’ culture remains central to an understanding of its cultural practices. This is due in the first place to the continual affirmation of this perception by artists, practitioners, and fans. Secondly, the historical connections between movements of black liberation and empowerment and the emergence of hip hop culture are well documented and reflected in artistic production.27 The influence of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s on hip hop is hard to overstate and can be traced in its cultural practices and products until this day.28 Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers as well as Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., and others are cited, sampled, and represented in various ways, attesting to the strong imprint these people and their struggles left on the hip hop generations of the following decades. Because artists insisted that their depictions of life in the ‘ghetto’ or ‘on the streets’ reflected the real struggle of the marginalized, their critics soon identified the lyrics to represent glorifications of the ‘gangster’, ‘hustler’, and ‘pimp’. The inevitable effect of this is the concomitant glorification and vilification of hip hop culture by a wider group of people. One side praises the artistic complexity and sophistication of rappers as an indication of their role as ‘organic intellectuals’ and spokespersons of their generation. The opposing side identifies rappers as examples of everything that is wrong with the black community in the USA. Neglecting education and celebrating violent, criminal, and misogynistic lifestyles, they are ultimately threatening the integrity of society as a whole.29 Although both sides judge hip hop differently, they both agree on its general characteristics and relevance; both view hip hop as a marginalized force to be reckoned with, for better or worse. 26  J.  Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation (New York: Picador 2005). 27  S.  Daulatzai, Black Star, Crescent Moon: the Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 106. 28  R. Rabaka, The Hip Hop Movement: from R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation (Langham: Lexington Books, 2013), 293. 29  T. Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What we Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop (New York: BasicCivitas, 2008).

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This dialectic of glorification and demonization continues to dominate public discourses about hip hop. With the globalization of hip hop, this antagonism resurfaces wherever a local community works to imitate and indigenize hip hop’s practices and styles. In the case of Middle Eastern societies, sympathetic observers point to the role of rappers and hip hoppers in furthering progressive politics, democratization, accountability, and authentic voices from the margins. Critics, on the other hand, often use the recurrent trope of cultural imperialism to argue that hip hop is a tool to destroy local culture and customs in order to guarantee US-hegemony in the region.30 Former Secretary of State and Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton alluded to hip hop as a diplomatic tool, citing it as representing America and its way of life.31 So, while hip hop is actually used as a tool of ‘soft power’ politics, local hip hop communities in the Middle East have a long record of criticizing US-foreign policy and are quick to point out that hip hop should be seen as a tool against the imperialism of the USA. Appropriation and re-creation of cultural practices, thus, have to be viewed as a more ambiguous enterprise, as Angela Williams states: The spread of rap music and hip-hop culture cannot only be understood as an American cultural import that has been acquired by youth around the world. Nor is it solely a manifestation of an indigenous art form and local expressive traditions. Rather, inquiry into global hip-hop movements must begin with the examination of local-to-local relationships and the development of global racial identity politics which affect claims to authenticity.32

The historic events that swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2010–2012 and the following years took many observers and experts by surprise. Public and scholarly discourse before 2010 perceived the region as caught in a spiral of stagnation and backwardness. The sheer size and effects of the mass protests that followed were unparalleled in the region for decades. As Western news agencies (and, as we will see, also scholars) searched for leaders and active promoters of these uprisings, they soon 30  U. Kahf, ‘Arabic Hip Hop: Claims of Authenticity and Identity of a New Genre’, Journal of Popular Music Studies vol. 19 (2007) no. 4, 359–385, 360f. 31  H.  Aidi, ‘The Grand (Hip-Hop) Chessboard’, Middle East Report no. 260 (2011), 25–39, 36. See also: H. Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture (New York: Vintage, 2014), 221f. 32  Williams ‘We Ain’t Terrorists but we Droppin’ Bombs’, 68.

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focused on the young, progressive ‘rebels’ who seemingly played such a central role in the events. Promoting this image were mainly members of NGOs and grassroots organization, musicians as well as other artists. In select media outlets, the images of local rappers became as iconic as those of mass street protests.33 Their lyrical and aesthetic activities were scrutinized to assess the motivations and goals of the protests. The political content of hip hop lyrics increased concurrently and gained in visibility, especially in Western public discourse, whose fascination with these ‘authentic’ voices from the ‘Arab streets’ left audiences with high hopes regarding their progressiveness and liberalism.34 A democratic Middle East seemed within reach, with the Arab rapper as its trailblazer.35 The ‘real’, socially and politically committed, and locally embedded hip hop was, thus, to be found in the Middle East.36 While hip hop’s commodification in the USA was perceived as a perversion of its practices and normativity, Western artists and fans began to signify this by claiming that hip hop was ‘dead’.37 What was earlier perceived as an authentic cultural expression seemed now hollow and assimilated into the very system it had originally opposed. Engaging in a form of inter-regional dialogue and being clearly aware of the public discourse on hip hop in the West, the rap group Arabian Knightz claimed in their song ‘Uknighted’ that ‘hip hop ain’t dead, it never died, it just moved to the Middle East, where the struggle is still alive’. Thus, some form of socio-­ economic or political struggle, that is, marginalization, authenticates hip hop—making it ‘alive’ and ‘real’—and subsequently elevates the artist’s profile and cultural capital. As Arab artists positioned themselves as critics of the system, the government, and security institutions like the police (often by invoking images 33  To give one vivid example: B. Hubbard, ‘Out of Egypt’s Chaos, a Musical Rebellion’, New York Times, 11 May 2013, includes a subheading that states: ‘Socially conscious songs vault over class barriers to open discussion’. 34  Ulysses, ‘Hip hop and the Arab uprisings’, Open Democray, 24 February 2012; https:// www.opendemocracy.net/en/hip-hop-and-arab-uprisings (accessed 09.02.18). 35  R.  El Zein, ‘From “Hip Hop Revolutionaries” to “Terrorist Thugs”: ‘Blackwashing’ between the Arab Spring and the War on Terror’, Lateral, vol. 5 (2016) no. 1; https:// csalateral.org/issue/5-1/hip-hop-blackwashing-el-zein (accessed 09.02.18). 36  This is one of the reasons for Sujatha Fernandes to identify Arabic as ‘the new lingua franca of the hip-hop world’. S.  Fernandes, ‘The Mixtape of the Revolution’, New York Times, 29 January 2012. 37  Nas, Hip Hop is Dead, from the album (2006) with same name: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=-OVPUGn_U_8 (accessed 09.02.18).

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that specifically related back to hip hop’s narrative as representing the voice from the margins), many Western media outlets uncritically reproduced their self-image as ‘real’. Thus, documentaries on the uprisings used hip hop as a soundtrack to their narrations,38 while rappers were framed as leaders of the revolutions and instrumental to its success.39 In this endeavor, the fluidity and ambiguity of hip hop’s cultural practices were often overlooked, or at least not fully considered. The ‘discovery’ of Middle Eastern hip hop by media outlets like MTV rather operated along the lines of a sender-receiver model. According to this model, the sender disseminates an objectively comprehensible, clear message, which is then appropriated as such by the receiver. Hence, if hip hop is perceived as ‘weapon of the weak’,40 complete with an inherent rebellious attitude, this quality needs to express itself in any setting the cultural practice might immigrate to. However, if one acknowledges the dynamic and ambiguous flow of culture and cultural practices—changing constantly and never reaching an ultimate and stable state of being—one can see how the receiving end of cultural communication becomes productive on its own terms, re-creating and remixing outer influences in new ways. In other words, the receiver may make something entirely new out of what is sent to him or her. The aforementioned El Général was repeatedly featured in European newspapers and magazines and invited to perform in European cities like Stockholm and Berlin on several occasions. Citing the perceived influence of his music on the revolutionary protests, the rapper was not solely questioned about his artistic activities in interviews and talks. Instead, his political positions and his understanding of the uprisings were scrutinized to come to terms with the motivations and goals of his generation during the revolutions. Perceiving him as decisive for the initial outbreak of the protests in Tunisia, TIME Magazine honored him as one of the hundred most influential personalities of the year 2011.41 He as well as other artists who 38   I.  Eickhoff, ‘All That is Banned is Desired: “Rebel Documentaries” and the Representation of Egyptian Revolutionaries’, Middle East: Topics & Arguments vol. 6 (2016); https://meta-journal.net/article/view/3801 (accessed 09.02.18) 39   MTV Rebel Music, Egypt: Bittersweet Revolution; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wZeZKmn2R7g (accessed 09.02.18). 40  J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale Univerity Press, 2008). 41  ‘The 2011 TIME 100’, TIME Magazine, 21 April 2011; https://content.time.com/ time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2066367_2066369_2066242,00.html (accessed 09.02.18).

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were covered by media in the West were invited to attend and perform on different cultural events all over Europe. On these events, they were often questioned on issues pertaining to the overall social and political situation of their countries of origin in the aftermath of the revolutions. Their public image as spokespersons of their generation and informed commentators of politics and society was affirmed and often overemphasized.42 This, however, did not always last long. As the protests and concurrent attention of Western media faded, the importance of engaging with young and politically unaffiliated artists from the Middle East and North Africa diminished. Additionally, the interest in those artists depended on familiarity with their perceived goals. El Général, for example, was first seen as a challenge to the former regime, and emblematic for the ideas of universal modernity, democratization, and secularism—exemplifying a kind of third road beyond the choice for autocracy or the rule of Islamists. His artistic activity, however, at times seemed to contradict this impression. After the song ‘Allahu Akbar’, featuring fellow rapper RTM,43 received attention and scrutiny, he was disinvited from a poetry festival in Berlin and subsequently regarded as a potential Islamist himself. The lyrics—which are available as subtitles on the video that features historical footage of charging ‘Islamic’ armies—speak of the wish to ‘die for Islam as a martyr’ and were obviously unfit to sustain his identification with what the Western public wanted to associate with a progressive artist. This being a rather mild example of ‘Jihadi Rap’,44 a quite marginal phenomenon in the global hip hop community, hip hop scholar Rayya El Zein noted: We thus find ourselves in a political environment where media outlets all but fall over themselves to celebrate hip hop in the Arab street as non-violent speaking truth to power, while simultaneously framing rap as the insidious soundtrack to terrorism and the Muslim rapper as terrorist […].45

In other cases, the romanticizing of Arab rap in Western media became itself a theme that rappers elaborated on. With ‘Hamith Hiloo’ 42  M. LeVine, ‘The Revolution Never Ends: Music, Protest and Rebirth in the Arab World’ in L.  Sadiki (ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring (London: Routledge, 2014), 354–365, 359. 43   El General, feat RTM, Allahu Akbar; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mCd6erISp8Q (accessed 09.02.18). 44  H. Aidi, Rebel Music, 206. 45  R. El Zein, ‘From “Hip Hop Revolutionaries” to “Terrorist Thugs”’.

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(Bittersweet),46 The Narcycist and the Palestinian group DAM ridiculed not only the sudden interest of Western media in Arab hip hop, but also criticized Arab artists who conform to the demands of Western media in order to receive continued coverage. Ironically, the video to the song contains English subtitles so as to be easily accessible for the Western audience. This practice was widespread during the critical phases of the uprisings of 2010–2012, as part of the efforts to disseminate the narrative of the revolution from the vantage point of the hip hop community internationally and increase global visibility. Some rappers, like Chyno from Lebanon, even prefer English lyrics to increase their ability to contribute to interregional discourses. Others, however, like the Syrian Bu Kulthoum or MC Amin, choose to only use local Arabic dialects citing their connection to the local community and their distrust against Western media. Without proper knowledge of the language, the meaning of the lyrics will be lost anyway, they argue. Additionally, they are well aware that their collaboration with Western journalists creates a relationship characterized by considerable power imbalances. Their refusal to explain and translate their art can be seen as an attempt to shift these relationships in their favor. Most media-coverage of the practices and products of the Arab hip hop communities thus focused on the binary opposition between ‘the people’ and ‘autocratic regimes’, which, indeed represents a considerable portion of respective activities in those communities. Conspicuously absent, however, were assessments of the opposition between the regions of the West—mainly Europe and North America—and the Arab or Islamic regions of the Middle East. In both cases, the identification of these binary oppositions and their relevance lay bare a specific understanding of an assumed or experienced relationship between what is perceived as marginalization in relation to which hegemonic force. While a part of the media coverage during and after the Arab Spring focused on the opposition of artists and activists to the policies of their governments, hoping the rebellions would lead to secular democracies according to a European model, local artists were additionally concerned with the reverberations of its postcolonial situation and the global power imbalances to their region’s disadvantage. The positionality of either perspective was thus the harbinger of the mythology that followed its presumptions.

46  The Narcicyst, Hamith Hiloo (Bittersweet); watch?v=PLxnXuczz3s (accessed 09.02.18).

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The Intellectual Rebel: Imagining Marginalization in Scholarship In hip hop in scholarship, it remains a debated issue how to delineate the central features of the culture and to arrive at a definitive answer to the question: What, essentially, is hip hop? Repeatedly, scholars refer to artists themselves, or their work, to argue for specific qualities that should be included or considered when dealing with hip hop from the perspective of the academy. Thus, the artist becomes a sort of ultimate authority. Indeed, who would be better suited to define hip hop than members of the artist community themselves? The problem with this line of reasoning seems obvious: In this scenario, the artist is elevated to a position where s/he becomes immune to critique. While her or his argument might be subjective and lacking in systematization or references, it is used as a source that succeeds other sources in relevance. It is, of course, possible to include arguments presented to us by members of a culture into our assessments. Their definitions and claims, however, have to be falsified and contextualized, which eventually lead to the realization that what is being defined is not the culture itself but an image of it. Attempts at defining specific cultural formations like hip hop often neglect the diverse forms of its realization and re-creation. The same holds true for other fields: Having studied Middle Eastern Studies, it seems frivolous to come up with a definition as to what ‘Islam’ essentially is, even more so if the main argument consists of a quote from a devoted Muslim. Differing definitions—which might be forcefully defended—are inevitable in discourses concerned with culture and cultural practice. Thus, ethnography and related approaches can be minefields of misunderstandings if the (cultural, political, economic, etc.) positions of the observer and the observed, as well as the ambiguity of language, are not considered appropriately. This issue becomes all the more pressing when the different positions represent power imbalances as well, as is generally the case when ‘popular culture’ is observed from the perspective of the university.47 The lack of organization and leadership in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, as well as the fact that the scholarly community had not foreseen 47  I.  Eickhoff uses the term ‘epistemological power’ to describe this power imbalance. I. Eickhof, ‘My friend, the Rebel. Structures and Dynamics of Cultural Foreign Funding in Cairo’ in N. Belakhdar, I. Eickhof, A. Hamada et al. (eds.), Arab Revolutions and Beyond: Change and Persistence. Proceedings of the International Conference, Tunis November 2013 (Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2013), 41–52, 41f.

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these events, reveals the necessity to turn from general political assessments to alternative fields of inquiry; that is, ‘popular culture’, the ‘ordinary’, and ‘common’ people. In understanding ‘popular protest music’ as reflective of ‘ideals and aspirations’, analysts have set out to explore ‘a revolutionary moment through its musical elements’.48 Scholarship on hip hop has a long history of this type of research. Already in 2008, Mark LeVine claimed that ‘hip hop has become the music of the age of globalization’, significantly due to its combination of music and lyrics which ‘captures the experience of being poor and marginalized better than any other art form’.49 At the same time, hip hop studies have partially surpassed this fixation and have grown ever more diverse and rich in theoretical considerations as well as methodological rigor. The question is, however, if those who were most vocal in interpreting and explaining the events of 2010–2012, and linking it to Arab hip hop, were always aware of the vast body of scholarship on hip hop culture. Where this was not the case, essentialized notions of hip hop were most prevalent.50 As with other practices commonly understood as ‘popular’, it is often presumed that research on hip hop is only possible through immersion and personal connection.51 The principal method of research consists of fieldwork, interviews, and participatory observations. This goes so far that research based on theoretical considerations and done without personal connections to the artists concerned is dismissed as irrelevant.52 This, however, is equivalent to distinguishing popular culture as essentially different from other cultural realms and delegating it to represent expressions of ‘ordinary’ or ‘marginalized’ segments of society.53 In the very act of delimiting research designs, the essentialism that inevitably becomes 48  A.  Valassopoulos and D.S.  Mostafa, ‘Popular Protest Music and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution’, Popular Music and Society vol. 37 (2014) no. 5, 638–659, 639. 49  M. LeVine, Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (New York: Three Rivers, 2009), 42. 50  Robin Wright’s Rock the Casbah disregards any mention of the body of hip hop scholarship. As does Asef Bayat’s Life as Politics. See: R. Wright, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2014); A. Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). 51  The previously cited Mark LeVine and H.  Samy Alim, for example, are among those demanding to ‘go into the field’ to research popular cultural expressions. 52  I base this partly on my personal experience of having submitted a theoretically grounded observation of hip hop in the Middle East only to have it returned by the reviewer who stated that, without ethnography, the topic couldn’t possibly be academically relevant. 53  J. Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 2011), 20.

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part and parcel of the analysis is edified. Although the claim that scholars need to experience the streets/clubs/housing projects/ghettos in order to analyze them is persuasive, it does not solve the problem of agency and, ultimately, judgment.54 With the academy ranking high in public affirmation of its role as producer of verifiable knowledge—and with ‘popular culture’ generally being perceived as rather simple—the power imbalance is considerable. Research in this conundrum involves acknowledging this relationship much more than simply exiting the office to immerse oneself in sites of cultural production. A much more decisive factor might be to acknowledge that the university itself is a cultural space, as is claimed by Daniel Chandler: We learn to read the world in terms of the codes and conventions which are dominant within the specific socio-cultural contexts and roles within which we are socialized. In the process of adopting a way of seeing, we also adopt an ‘identity’. The most important constancy in our understanding of reality is our sense of who we are as an individual.55

Academic inquiry into forms of popular culture such as hip hop represents not necessarily the objective and theoretically sound acquisition of knowledge; instead, it is a meeting of different cultural communities, in which one is perceived as entitled to scrutinize the worth and relevance of the other.56 This relationship is at the heart of the assumption that popular cultures are not even worth considering in university, or that members of hip hop communities should behave gratuitous toward scholars researching hip hop.57 It is the idea that practices perceived as ‘popular’ are in some way exalted through their acknowledgment by members of the community of scholars. Hip hop communities often harbor great distrust against institutions that are perceived as representing the hegemonic system. This distrust is 54  T.H.  Eriksen, Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (London: Pluto Press, 2015), 37. 55  D. Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2018), 155. 56  I follow Lila Abu-Lughod’s criticism of ethnographic representations as ‘partial’ and ‘positioned truths’ as well as their tendency of generalization. L.  Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing against Culture’ in R.G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991), 137–162. 57  This was explicitly formulated during a roundtable on hip hop with researchers and practitioners at the ‘1st International Hip Hop Studies Conference’ in Cambridge, UK, in 2016.

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based on the very myth of hip hop as a voice of the disadvantaged and outcast of society, which includes not only the police and the government but also the university. Not only is the university perceived as an institution built to disseminate the master narrative of hegemonic forces, it is additionally suspected of misrepresenting and distorting the cultural practices of hip hop. This can be attributed at least partly to the cultural divide between the two cultural realms and the authority granted to either of them in society. In the case of hip hop communities in the Middle East, there is an added distrust when collaborating with Western researchers; in part due to the fact that those researchers often stem from former colonizing countries, but also because the complex relationship between observers and observed is prone to misconceptions and essentialisms. Robin Wright’s Rock the Casbah (2011) stands out as formidable example of the unwarranted romanticizing of popular cultural practices and their incomprehension. Painting a picture of the rapper as not only instrumental for the unfolding events of the Arab Spring, but additionally as democratic, liberal, and politically progressive is problematic to say the least. This problem arises specifically from her misunderstanding of hip hop as representing ‘American’ culture and, hence, ‘American’ values. The mere diffusion of cultural practices, in her view, could be counted as America’s contribution to the democratizing impulse that was felt during the uprisings. Despite the lack of political programs, and despite the diversity of protesters and their motivations beyond the deposing of the government, the simple fact that hip hop and rap seemed to be a voice during the protests led her to conclude that hip hop was not only a driving force of the revolution, but also that it represented the democratic, secular side of it. While being repeatedly vilified as harmful to societal mores inside the US, hip hop was suddenly praised as an essentially American culture whose thriving in disparate societies directly translates into social and political progress. Wright even goes so far to argue that hip hop literally introduced protest music into the Middle East,58 a claim that—being familiar with the role and relevance of poetry and music in the region—is not only false but harmful. Stripped of real agency, the rappers are imagined as ambassadors who, by their appropriation of popular cultural practices alone, facilitate political and economic progress through democratization. Thus, by merely appreciating hip hop, rappers of the region are understood as allies of the US in the transregional discourse on the political and social  Wright; Rock the Casbah, 123.

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development of the Middle East. Ted Swedenburg calls this tendency to read democratic and secular values into Middle Eastern rap ‘a fit of wishful thinking’.59 Additionally, in overemphasizing the role of rappers during political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, observers paid little attention to the fact that the largest hip hop-markets in the region are Morocco and Algeria—countries that did not experience protest movements of a significant scale in 2010–2012—and that there is a strong tradition of protest music in Egypt, while Tunisia lacks these resources for artistic inspiration.60 The overall impression of Western observers of the Arab Spring has been that local hip hop communities reflected the authentic discourse and events on the ‘streets’. Concomitantly to hip hop’s insistence on the local as the principal arena for the authentication of its practices—an aspect that can be traced to the founding myth of the culture—many scholars took this claim at face value and deducted that in engaging with the respective communities and artists they would be able to comprehend the life-worlds and political ideologies of their social communities. In this quest, it was often lost on authors that, as Clifford Geertz noted: […] the study of culture, defined as ‘webs of significance he (man) himself has spun’ is ‘not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning’.61

The fascination with the revolutionary artist, popular culture, and ‘ordinary’ people, however, faded as the mass protests subsided and were repressed.62 The high hopes regarding the ‘modernizing’ potential of hip hop in the Middle East and North Africa due to its perceived ‘modern’ aesthetics went unfulfilled as a new socio-political status-quo relegated rappers and other artists to the margins of attention yet again. The thrust formerly attached to popular cultural expressions faded with the 59  E. Goldman, ‘Microphone to Megaphone: Egyptian Rappers and Cultural Diplomacy’, Muftah; https://muftah.org/microphone-to-megaphone-egyptian-rappers-and-culturaldiplomacy/ (accessed 11.11.2013). 60  K. Bouzouita, ‘Music of Dissent and Revolution’, Middle East Critique vol. 22 (2013) no. 3, 281–292, 281. 61  Clifford Geertz quoted in: P. Bennett, ‘Barthes’ Myth Today: Barthes after Barthes’ in P. Bennett and J. McDougall (eds.), Barthes Mythologies Today: Readings of Contemporary Culture (New York: Routledge, 2013), 142–168, 160. 62  LeVine, ‘The Revolution Never Ends’, 364.

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diminishing revolutionary impulse. This had nothing to do with the rebelliousness or the marginalization expressed by the artists themselves. Rather, the reduced interest followed trends and focal points that are and were determined by the structure and function of academic culture itself.

Conclusion Hip hop and rap can certainly take part in, and significantly influence, public discourses around social and political issues. This is mainly due to the public’s understanding that hip hop delivers unrefined messages from ‘the streets’ and hence provides insight into the life-worlds of communities that are in some way marginalized and lack other means of impacting public opinion and politics. Hip hop’s effectiveness in this sense is predicated on the very myth that hip hop provides a voice to the voiceless; a belief shared among hip hop communities, as well as the media and scholarship. The myth of hip hop, representing the voice from the margins, thus leads to its realization and progression. In repeating and (re-)creating binary oppositions that structure the world according to a clear understanding of who is marginalized by who (or what), the social and cultural surroundings become manageable and comprehensible. Additionally, through the very act of invoking respective mythical figures repeatedly in a social surrounding that affirms the inherent dichotomy, the myth becomes ‘real’ in that it serves as a central part of the general social constitution of this community. Seeing hip hop as a potent cultural weapon of the weak is an unconscious (or conscious) decision which highlights specific aspects of the culture, to the detriment of others. As a result, the term hip hop becomes essentialized in an exclusive manner (‘hip hop, essentially, is…’). Everything connected to hip hop but understood as being at odds with the myth— such as commercialism—is thus discarded as ‘not the real thing’. Incidents that highlight hip hop’s destructive or disrespectful elements will repeatedly lead to a disassociation of these elements as not belonging to ‘real’ hip hop. Here, we can observe the function of an established myth as it generates an additional binary opposition by relegating all aspects contradicting the central assumptions of the myth in question (hip hop is a tool of marginalized people) to the sphere of delusion and deception (hip hop is used by corporations to further consumerism) and, thus, outside the cultural realm proper.

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Such considerations imply that it is not enough to simply ‘check’ the factuality and/or historical accuracy of the hip hop myth. Rebuking specific myths about hip hop does not do much more than reversing the argument; along the lines of, for example, ‘hip hop is not the voice of the voiceless’. Rather, by acknowledging the pervasive role of myths, it becomes impossible to neglect its affirmative potential and ability to create the reality it describes. If myth is language,63 the aim of researching myths is to comprehend the different ways in which they can be read and explained. The main interest in doing so is not to arrive at ‘objective’ conclusions. Rather, by understanding why specific myths are repeated and reaffirmed, new knowledge is created of the societies in which these myths thrive. The knowledge gathered through such a methodology, however, always consists of a snapshot of the observed practices. Due to culture’s fluidity and the ever-changing nature of language, both the cultural practices and the medium with which we describe and analyze them will inadvertently transform and give way to new interpretations. Scholarship must itself be perceived as a cultural realm. A central myth in scholarship is its ability to produce lasting objective knowledge, achieved by performing several cultural practices and techniques called ‘research’ and disseminated through language. In performing these practices, scholars systematize, structure, and describe their theoretical approaches and methods, often using a specified code or vocabulary. Distinguishing something or someone as ‘scholarly’ or ‘scientific’ carries with it a thrust of authority that might not be suitable if we acknowledge in how many and diverse ways scientific communities agreed on false presumptions in the past. Just as described above for hip hop, if confronted with the claim of being or arguing ‘scientifically’, it might be insightful to ask ourselves why this cultural practice of claiming a supposedly superior knowledge is invoked at a certain place and at a certain time. The phrase ‘popular culture’ was first introduced into the English language at the beginning of the nineteenth century and implied a legal and political connection: to distinguish between ‘the people’ and those representing power over them.64 This distinction is re-created not only by  Barthes, Mythen des Alltags.  L.S. Clark, ‘When the University Went “Pop”: Exploring Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture, and the Rising Interest in the Study of Popular Culture’ in M.  Pickering (ed.), Popular Culture, Vol. II: From Mass Culture Critique to Popular Culture Studies (London: Sage, 2010), 415–432, 422. 63 64

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artists and rappers, but also by journalists and scholars who understand ‘popular culture’ as a weapon of the weak. This seeming consensus, however, obscures differing interpretations as to who or what represents ‘the people’ or ‘marginalization’ and the relative cultural position vis-à-vis the observed cultural practices. While relatively powerful individuals are able to perform marginality artistically through rapping, journalists depend on visibility in their markets and scholars respond to thematic trends. In all contexts and discursive environments, invoking or affirming either myth regarding hip hop culture—be it heralding it as an authentic expression or vilifying it as a debased fad—can, thus, not be viewed as a conclusive observation. Rather, the practice of affirmation is an active claim regarding the authority to make sense of ourselves and our surroundings. To describe cultural practices is merely an attempt to define and thus render comprehensible what we observe or experience. This has to be understood itself in cultural terms, because ‘what we are dealing with in cultural studies of popular music […] are academic not working-class fantasies’.65

65  S. Frith, ‘The Cultural Study of Popular Music’ in L.  Grossberg, C.  Nelson and P. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992), 174–182, 180.

CHAPTER 13

‘Soaking Up the Punky-Funky All-Feel of Eastern Kreuzberg’: Myth-Making, Preference Construction, and Youth Cultures Thierry P. F. Verburgh

Kreuzberg, center of West Berlin counterculture during the 1980s… This myth encompasses many different realities, and the neighborhood actually still offers many faces. Alternative cultural centers [and] cafes and trendy shops blossom on every street corner. With its armada of bars open all night, this is the neighborhood to go out and party.1 —François Rault & Aude Gandiol, Michelin, Le Guide Vert, 2018

The quote in the title is taken from A. Schulte-Peevers, Lonely Planet Berlin (Carlton: Lonely Planet Global Limited, 2017), 145. 1   The opening quote is from F. Rault and A. Gandiol, Berlin: week-end. Michelin, Le Guide Vert (Boulogne-Billancourt: Michelin, 2017), 65. All non-English quotes are translated into English by the author.

T. P. F. Verburgh (*) Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands © The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_13

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Some neighborhoods from around the world have become synonymous with vibrant local youth cultures. Indicative of this mythical image is their incorporation in global ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists by a wide range of influential online newspapers, magazines, and travel websites, such as The Telegraph, Vogue, and Complex. In these lists, Harlem (New York) is, for example, viewed as an important breeding ground for hip hop  culture, while Seoul’s Hongdae is celebrated for its time-honored underground indie network, its vast student population, its numerous art initiatives, and its exuberant club culture. Yet, out of all neighborhoods, the eastern part of Kreuzberg (Berlin) tends to receive the most attention in these ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists. It is usually placed on top, or otherwise competes as a top contender. Many list compilers seem to regard eastern Kreuzberg as the ultimate center of alternative youth cultures, and proof of just how sensational or trendsetting youth cultures can be.2 Also dubbed ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’, the mythical image of eastern Kreuzberg as a youth culture neighborhood has resonated strongly in wider global culture and research. This subcultural image is often  For a selection of ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists from recent years with mentions of Harlem, Hongdae, and Kreuzberg, see for instance: J. Kimble, ‘The 50 most stylish neighborhoods in the world’, Complex (version: October 9, 2012), www.complex.com/ style/2012/10/the-50-most-stylish-neighborhoods-in-the-world (accessed: June 10, 2018); J. Teideman, ‘The 20 most hipster neighbourhoods in the world’, Skyscanner (version: March 24, 2014), www.skyscanner.net/news/20-most-hipster-neighbourhoods-world (accessed: June 10, 2018); G. Jaccoma, ‘The 10 Most Hipster Neighborhoods on Earth’, Thrillist (version: July 18, 2014), www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/top-10-hipster-neighborhoods-on-earth-williamsburg-new-york-tops-our-list (accessed: June 10, 2018); N. Remsen, ‘Global street style report: mapping out the 15 coolest neighborhoods in the world’, Vogue (version: September 2014), www.vogue.com/slideshow/fifteen-cooleststreet-style-neighborhoods (accessed: June 10, 2018); D.  Grant, ‘The 8 Most Hipster Neighborhoods in the World’, TheRichest (version: October 21, 2014), www.therichest. com/lifestyle/the-8-most-hipster-neighborhoods-in-the-world (accessed: June 10, 2018); ‘The world’s most ‘hipster’ neighbourhoods’, The Telegraph (version: June 17, 2015), web. archive.org/web/20150617101533/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/11667790/The-worlds-most-hipster-neighbourhoods.html (accessed: June 10, 2018); M. Lisker, ‘Hipster spots around the world’, Skyscanner (version: July 15, 2015), www.skyscanner.com/tips-and-inspiration/hipster-spots-around-world (accessed: June 10, 2018); J. Bishop, ‘A look back at five of 2016’s coolest neighborhoods’, Forbes (version: January 19, 2017), www.forbes.com/sites/bishopjordan/2017/01/19/coolest-neighborhoods-in-theworld (accessed: June 10, 2018); ‘The world’s 27 most hipster neighbourhoods’, The Telegraph (version: August 31, 2017), www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/galleries/most-hipsterneighbourhoods-in-the-world (accessed: June 10, 2018); C.  Stuart, ‘7 Insanely Hip Neighborhoods (Beyond Brooklyn)’, Jetsetter (version: December 31, 2017), www.jetsetter. com/magazine/insanely-hip-international-neighborhoods (accessed: June 10, 2018). 2

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mentioned alongside the image of ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’ as a multicultural neighborhood, since people with a Turkish background form a significant part of the population after migrating to eastern Kreuzberg as guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s.3 The subcultural image of ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’ has featured in press media and many cultural outputs like novels, movies, TV series, documentaries, and comic books.4 Researchers have gratefully used these sources to reconstruct what this image consists of. Thus, anthropologist Barbara Lang analyzed news articles and travel guidebooks in her 1998 monograph to determine the central elements that make up this ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’.5 This image has since then been repeatedly scrutinized by other researchers, like local historian Martin Düspohl, who has concisely mapped these features through the subcultural history of the neighborhood.6 Another approach by film theorist Barbara Mennel states that films like Was tun, wenn’s brennt? (2001) and Herr Lehmann (2003) consist of coming-of-age stories, set in a radically politicized Kreuzberg, so as to underscore the youthful and alternative identity of the neighborhood.7 However, the way a phenomenon gains its mythical status cannot entirely be explained through a reconstruction of its compelling features 3  What is noteworthy here is that when it comes to eastern Kreuzberg youth cultures, images of Turkish youth gangs and Turkish hip hop adherents are most of the times only incorporated into Kreuzberg’s multicultural Mythos and almost never into Kreuzberg’s subcultural Mythos. 4  For a selection of popular cultural outputs that are (partially) set in a young, alternative, and hip eastern Kreuzberg, see for instance the novels by S.  Regener: Herr Lehmann (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2001), and Wiener Straße (Berlin: Galiani Berlin, 2017), of which the first has been translated into English as Berlin Blues (London: Vintage, 2003). For movies, see for instance Run Lola Run (1998), Was tun, wenn’s brennt? (2001), Herr Lehmann (2003), Victoria (2015), Atomic Blonde (2017), and Berlin Syndrome (2017). For international TV series, see for instance season 5 of Homeland (2015), and the TV series Berlin Station (2016–2019). For popular documentaries, see for instance the international documentary B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979–1989 (2015). For comic books, see for instance J.  Ulbert and J.  Mailliet, Gleisdreieck: Berlin 1981 (Berlin: Berlin Story Verlag, 2016). 5  B. Lang, ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’, Leviathan vol. 22 (1994) no. 4, 498–519; Ibid., Mythos Kreuzberg: Ethnographie eines Stadteills, 1961–1995 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1998). 6  M. Düspohl, ‘Mythos Kreuzberg: ein historischer Streifzug’ in Susanne Stemmler (ed.), New York – Berlin: Kulturen in der Stadt (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 86–102. 7  B.  Mennel, ‘Political Nostalgia and Local Memory: the Kreuzberg of the 1980s in Contemporary German Film’, The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory vol. 82 (2007) no. 1, 54–77.

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alone. What the ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists show is that a certain phenomenon needs to be singled out, or preferred, in order to become mythicized. The example of subcultural Kreuzberg forms a perfect case study to analyze how preferences lead to mythification, and especially how youth culture phenomena become mythicized. In this chapter, theories of mythification will therefore be combined with the theory of ‘preference construction’. This allows for an analysis of how certain groups of people, through their shared considerations, come to collectively prefer one representation over the other, thereby elevating and wholeheartedly embracing a representation as the only actuality, or as one of the definite and most authentic actualities among related phenomena—thereby turning a representation into a myth. In order to analyze this construction of preferences within the process of myth-making, this chapter will first assess what the mythicized features of subcultural Kreuzberg consist of. Where possible, comparisons will be made between Kreuzberg and other places  throughout the chapter, since this helps to illuminate what makes Kreuzberg more subcultural than other places to people. Subsequently, a cross-examination between primary sources from press media, culture, tourism, and personal recollections will allow for a reconstruction of how preference construction has led to Kreuzberg’s mythical image as a subcultural neighborhood over time. Press media, cultural output, and the tourism industry often formed the primary actors introducing and spreading sensational images of subcultural Kreuzberg. Material from press media is mainly drawn from moments of increased interest in the neighborhood—that is, in the wake of riots and radical protest—indicating how instances of moral panic and sensation brought eastern Kreuzberg under the attention of a wider group of people. Comparing different long-­ running travel guidebook series on Berlin from around the world allows for a more structural analysis of the development of the mythical image.8 8  A comparative analysis between different travel guidebook series on Berlin from around the world from the period 1967 to 2017 (a period of fifty years that translates roughly to the first appropriations of eastern Kreuzberg by left-alternative adolescents to recent times) will show in detail how the preference for eastern Kreuzberg as the ultimate youth culture neighborhood has developed over a few decades of time. One English (Rough Guides, sold all over the world), one French (Michelin), and two German (Baedeker and Berlin für Junge Leute, of which the latter has also been translated into English and French) series are analyzed to show how the myth has developed simultaneously in different parts of the world. Baedeker and Michelin are esteemed series for a wider audience, while Rough Guides and Berlin für Junge Leute are targeted at younger audiences, thereby revealing how the development was

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Finally, an analysis of personal recollections like memoirs, interviews, tourist reviews, and online reactions to news or opinion pieces will reveal the underlying drives and sentiments through which wider society has embraced the mythical image. In the end, this chapter will show (i) how eastern Kreuzberg got mythicized as a genuine and quintessential  youth culture neighborhood; (ii) what appeals the most to people when mythicizing youth cultures; and, more generally, (iii) how the construction of preferences can lead to mythification.

Mythification: Combining Theories of Sacralization, Canonization, and Preference Construction Although the mythification of subcultural eastern Kreuzberg can be approached through the myth’s own features, the previously mentioned ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists show, by contrast, that a phenomenon also needs to be selected or preferred to attain its mythical status. Within myth studies, the concept of the ‘sacred’ emphasizes the transcending authority that myths have among people. It holds that myths form representations that are bestowed with powerful and important meanings and significance. Through this aggrandizement, they are set apart from other representations within collective memory. The concept thus emphasizes the ways and the extent to which a group of people becomes invested in a certain representation and its projected meanings, practices, norms, and values, which are subsequently deemed as exceptional, unassailable, meaningful, and authentic—whether they are factually true or not.9 According to sociologist Gérard Bouchard, this represented among different generations. Although the Berlin für Junge Leute and Rough Guides series were first published in 1981 and 1990 respectively, they form the oldest travel guidebook series on Berlin specifically for a younger audience that have been published until 2017 and after. The sample analysis is divided by an interval range of nine to eleven years between publications from the year 1967 onwards, with the exception of the first publications of Berlin für Junge Leute and Rough Guides. 9  The concept of ‘sacred’ or ‘sacralization’ has a long pedigree in myth studies. It is based on the dichotomy of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ by sociologist É. Durkheim, see Émile Durkheim, Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse: Le Systeme Totemique en Australie (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1912). Philosopher Mircea Eliade was the first to specifically appropriate the dichotomy to the definition of myths in M.  Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (London: Sheed and Ward, 1958); and Ibid., Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (London: Fontana, 1968). Recently, sociologist Gérard Bouchard has proposed that ‘sacralization’ is

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‘sacralization’ of a myth ‘lies at the heart of what could be called its immune system; it is above all thanks to this attribute that myth can endure and survive opposition and contradictions’.10 This competitive strength that myths have over other representations indicates that they have to be preferred or chosen, which can best be exemplified by the corresponding concept of ‘canonization’. Originating from religious studies, philosophy, literary studies, and music studies, canonization explains how certain phenomena are elevated and incorporated into authoritative and carefully selected sets of defining works, ideas, objects, persons, or historical moments, also known as canons.11 Some canons classify their canonized phenomena as equally exceptional, which might contradict the unconditional investment and belief a group can have in one myth. However, as in the case of myths, canonized phenomena can also be competitive to each other, and therefore ranked and organized hierarchically, much like the ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists. In such cases, the choices for preferring one exceptional phenomenon over the other need to be substantiated.12 These choices and substantiations can be contested and renegotiated, after which certain phenomena are

the last and most important step in the process for a representation to become a myth, see G.  Bouchard, Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 2017). See also W.G. Doty, Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals (second edition; Tuscaloosa & London: University of Alabama Press, 2000), 75–76. 10  Bouchard, Social Myths, 56 11  On the origins and definitions of ‘canon’, ‘canonization’, and ‘canon formation’, see W.  Weber, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Musical Canon in Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of the American Musicological Society vol. 47 (1994) no. 3, 488–520; S. Stuurman and M.  Grever, ‘Introduction: Old Canons and New Histories’ in S.  Stuurman and M. Grever, Beyond the Canon: History for the Twenty-first Century (Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 1–16, 3–4. 12  On the competitiveness and non-competitiveness of canons, see for instance the numerous examples of literary canons created by distinguished organizations. For example, Penguin’s ‘100 Essential Penguin Classics’ list does not favor one canonized novel over another. The 2002 Norwegian Bokklubben World Library list goes one step further by championing Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la Mancha (first part published in 1605 and the second part in 1615) as the best novel ever in an otherwise non-hierarchical list. In turn, Le Monde’s 1999 list of best novels from the twentieth century is a noteworthy example of competitive canon lists, as it is ranked from one to hundred with a heavy bias toward French authors, based on a poll among French readers.

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incorporated or discarded from canons,13 a process resembling the quarrels between groups over which myth is right or wrong. Thus, during the process of myth-making, preferences are constructed when people choose one representation over another as more exceptional or true, and subsequently become invested in it. According to the theory of preference construction from behavioral sciences, the preferences people cultivate in making choices are based on ever-changing considerations between on the one hand personal sentiments (memories, feelings, knowledge, and existing preferences) and on the other hand the external ‘decision environment’ (all the possible choices and other external influences present at the time of the decision). Preferences are therefore regarded as constructed, rather than predetermined, static, or merely influenced by the decision environment.14 When appropriated collectively, a preference becomes to a certain degree a social construct that a group deems exceptional or true,15 and thus becomes a myth—whether it is factually true or not. By combining the theories of sacralization, canonization, and preference construction, it becomes possible to reconstruct the deciding factors that make a group prefer one representation over the other and how they get invested in it, thus turning it into a myth. The case of subcultural eastern Kreuzberg is illustrative of this more general process.

Establishing a Baseline: The Mythical Image of Subcultural Eastern Kreuzberg What are the subcultural features of eastern Kreuzberg that have appealed the most to people? Before reconstructing how these features have come to be mythified through the process of preference construction, it is important to assess what they consist of. Since every individual experiences the world differently, it can be challenging to assess all preference constructions in a myth-making process. Establishing a baseline or framework by determining and demarcating the mythicized features first will help to retroactively analyze the preference constructions of groups of people in 13  R. Sela-Sheffy, ‘Canon Formation Revisited: Canon and Cultural Production’, Neohelicon vol. 29 (2002) no. 2, 141–159. 14  S.  Lichtenstein and P.  Slovic, ‘The Construction of Preference: An Overview’ in S. Lichtenstein and P. Slovic (eds.), The Construction of Preference (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–40, 2. 15  T. Dietz and P.C. Stern, ‘Toward a Theory of Choice: Socially Embedded Preference Construction’, The Journal of Socio-Economics vol. 24 (1995) no. 2, 261–279.

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regarding eastern Kreuzberg as a youth culture neighborhood. A comparison between the area and its two direct competitors from the canonized ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists will help to illuminate the most appealing features.16 When all lists are aggregated from the first online compilation from 2012 to 2017, Williamsburg (Brooklyn, New  York) comes out third, Södermalm (Stockholm) forms the runner-up, and Kreuzberg takes first place. In fact, Kreuzberg is not only usually ranked higher but also incorporated in all lists, while Södermalm is mentioned only nine out  of ten times, and Williamsburg only seven times. Although not every list compiler champions Kreuzberg as their number one youth culture neighborhood in the world, many others thus usually prefer it over most other neighborhoods. In a quantitative or canonized manner, then, Kreuzberg has become the ultimate youth culture neighborhood of the world according to the lists discussed here.17 What immediately stands out when comparing the three neighborhoods is that in the lists Kreuzberg is famed for its more diverse notion of what youth cultures can entail, while Williamsburg and Södermalm are merely celebrated for capitalizing the latest fad. Williamsburg is mainly seen as the hipster capital of the world. The area ticks all the boxes with which hipsterdom is usually associated. According to compiler David Grant, in Williamsburg ‘the basics of what is ‘required’ to be hipster [are] 16  For the ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists that have been analyzed in this section, see footnote 2. These lists have been selected through the following criteria: (i) all lists should focus on neighborhoods that are seen as the ‘coolest’, ‘trendiest’, ‘stylish’, ‘hippest’, or ‘most hipster’, that is, terms that are used to describe neighborhoods as youth culture hotspots; (ii) all lists have to incorporate neighborhoods from more than one continent, so that a preference for one neighborhood as the ultimate youth culture neighborhood in the world can be exemplified; (iii) all lists have to be hierarchically ranked so that a preference for one neighborhood over others can be exemplified in a quantified manner; (iv) all lists should be in the top 25.000 most visited websites in the world based on Alexa.com rankings throughout 2018 in order to assess whether these lists have had an extensive reach among people worldwide. The first list that fits these criteria dates from 2012. The last lists are from 2017, a date that is in line with the time period that is used for the analysis of travel guidebook series in this chapter (see footnote 8). 17  The aggregation of the lists has been conducted as follows. First places in the lists have been assigned with 10 points, and this decreases with one point every place down to position 10, which is thus assigned with only 1 point. Places 11 to 50 have been assigned with 0.5 points. After assigning all points, all scores for every neighborhood have been added up, thus resulting in the aggregated top three neighborhoods as mentioned above.

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all here: coffee shops, organic farmer markets, beards, a variety of food trucks and of course creative, anti-establishment residents’.18 Although some compilers argue that Södermalm tries to emulate Williamsburg, most agree that the neighborhood has a distinctive hipster character as it is celebrated for its extremely ‘intimate’ and ‘bohemian’ atmosphere. Its old architecture, vintage shops, charming bars, and the omnipresence of amiable Swedish contemporary and retro design all add to its intimacy. In turn, its image as ‘boho-chic’ is, according to Chelsea Stuart, the result of that ‘the Millenial-favored district is chock-a-block with converted art galleries, eclectic cafes, and designer boutiques’.19 In spite of this extreme fashionableness of hipster Williamsburg and Södermalm, eastern Kreuzberg dominates the ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists as the ultimate youth culture neighborhood because it caters to a more diverse notion of what youth cultures can entail. While some compilers admit that hipsterdom has also reached Kreuzberg, most argue that the area surpasses this fad. Jordan Bishop, who places Kreuzberg on top of his 2016 list, best sums up this more diverse notion of subcultural Kreuzberg in popular consciousness: This hip, high-energy neighborhood is loved by Berliners and known the world over for its cool, rebellious vibes, thriving alternative music and art scenes and notoriously wild nightlife. Being formerly enclosed by the Berlin Wall led this area to develop a distinctive atmosphere and strong r­ evolutionary spirit, which still persist today in spite of the encroaching gentrification.20

From these lists, the mythical image of subcultural Kreuzberg can thus be divided into two main features with similar connotations. First, eastern Kreuzberg is usually remembered as an alternative stronghold. The fundaments of this image are held to date back to its history as an epicenter for a wide range of revolutionaries, rebels, and countercultures from before the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). Second, and partly in conjunction with this, the neighborhood is regarded as a modern trendsetting area heavily defined by a diverse range of music, art, fashion, activism, and nightlife.

 For the quote, see Grant, ‘The 8 Most’.  For the quote, see Stuart, ‘7 Insanely Hip’. 20  Bishop, ‘A look back’. 18 19

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‘Punk Rock Cred’:21 Mythifying Eastern Kreuzberg as a Historically Alternative Neighborhood But how have these two features of historicized alternativeness and modern  trendsetting power come to appeal to people, thereby creating the mythical image of eastern Kreuzberg as the ultimate youth culture neighborhood? The rest of this chapter will analyze to what extent this process of preference construction has contributed to the mythification of subcultural Kreuzberg by examining the complex interplay between the decision environment (comparative options out of which Kreuzberg has been chosen; external factors such as press media and tourism industries influencing people’s views regarding the neighborhood in certain ways) and personal sentiments (memories, feelings, knowledge, and existing preferences). Authenticity and Experience: Youth Cultures Mythifying Subcultural Eastern Kreuzberg The start of the Kreuzberg myth as an alternative neighborhood can first be attributed to the attraction the area held for various West Berlin youth cultures from before the fall of the Berlin Wall that were regarded as rebellious, revolutionary, and countercultural. Although youth cultures always had been active throughout the whole of West Berlin, many local subcultural actors came to prefer eastern Kreuzberg out of all possible neighborhoods within the local decision environment. They became invested in their choice mainly through the personal sentiments of knowledge, feelings, and existing preferences; not only did cheap housing accommodations and the thrill of rebellion attract youth cultures to the area, they also found that the neighborhood suited their ideas and identities. These Kreuzberg adherents thereby created the idea that Kreuzberg could be their true home. Between the 1960s and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this reputation attracted many other subcultural actors and turned the area into a flourishing subcultural biotope. The choice of youth cultures to identify with eastern Kreuzberg stemmed from their search for affordable spaces where they could cultivate their identities, and submerge themselves in their specific lifestyles. This spatial appropriation was part of a wider longing for ‘experiences’ and ‘authenticity’ at that time. Sociologist Gerhard Schulze states that in the  Quote from Grant, ‘The 8 Most’.

21

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1950s and 1960s, when Western civilizations had for the first time covered basic needs, people began to shape their lives differently in search of meaningful experiences and happiness. This encouraged people to adopt new criteria and modes of selection that became increasingly qualitative.22 Through this shift, ‘scenes’ (such as youth cultures) also came to articulate their own experiential preferences and sought to find their own place and position in society.23 In line with this, historian Sven Reichardt states that through personal experiences and identity-formation, from the 1960s to the 1980s, various left-alternative movements (including the later autonomist squatters) came to seek authenticity over what they viewed to be artificial middle-class conventionalism, consumption, and capitalism.24 Through these preferences, they became the first genuine youth cultures to mythicize eastern Kreuzberg as their home between the 1960s and 1980s. Yet, Kreuzberg was not the first choice of these youngsters. During the Cold War, West Berlin especially had a pull on progressive-minded, pacifist, and left-alternative adolescents, because its inhabitants could not be drafted for the West German army. The antiauthoritarian and antifascist West German student movement of 1967/68 at first mainly gathered in the more developed West Berlin districts Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, and Dahlem. These places already had a vast network of meeting places, including the Freie Universität and nightlife venues.25 However, after the movement reached its height in 1967/68, it splintered into different left-­ alternative scenes, such as feminists, communists, and antiauthoritarian Spontis, who went to look for new places that would better suit their 22  G. Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1992); Ibid., ‘Searching Ground: Patterns of Self-Transcendence in Late Experience Society,’ keynote lecture at the Fourth Nordic Conference on Cultural Policy Research, Jyväskylä, Finland, August 19–22, 2009. For other major publications that touch upon the experiential turn, see B.J. Pine and J.H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999); Z.  Bauman, The Art of Life (Cambridge & Malden: Polity Press, 2008). 23  Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft, 459–494. 24  S.  Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft: linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2014), 57–59. 25  M.  Dühspol, Kleine Kreuzberg-Geschichte (third edition; Berlin: Berlin Story Verlag, 2012), 127; M. Sontheimer and P. Wensierski, Berlin: Stadt der Revolte (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2018), 65; D.T. Lehmann, ‘Erscheint donnerstags mit Kleinanzeigen: auf den Spuren einer linken Infrastruktur’ in Rotaprint 25 (ed.), Revolte, Underground in Westberlin, 1969–1972 (Hamburg & Berlin: Assoziation A, 2006), 61–70.

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various newly radicalized identities. Although there were already some left-­alternative people and venues situated in Kreuzberg,26 after 1967/68 more and more radicals came to adopt the view that eastern Kreuzberg would ideally suit their ideals and identities. A decade after the erection of the Berlin Wall by the communist German Democratic Republic in 1961, the area was left in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, forgotten by politicians and officials, and abandoned by local industry and businesses. As the neighborhood declined and became a run-down area with cheap accommodations and inhabited by working-class citizens,27 left-alternatives came to see Kreuzberg as a good option for building a solidary community and parallel society.28 Although there were several other left-alternative areas throughout West Berlin, Kreuzberg’s new alternative image attracted many of them to the neighborhood. Into the 1980s, Kreuzberg therefore became the district with the highest density of left-alternative residents, shops, nightlife venues, communes, cultural centers, and student houses. Around 1980, these left-alternative appropriations were carried on as West Berlin turned into a battleground between on the one hand squatters (often supported by other locals and sympathizers) and authorities and property speculators on the other. Although the squatter movement was active throughout the city (such as Schöneberg, West Berlin’s second-­ most squatted district), eastern Kreuzberg became the movement’s center with the most squatted buildings in West Berlin. While Kreuzberg already harbored a few squats in the early 1970s, its number grew exponentially around 1980.29 By then, Kreuzberg especially became a hotbed for radical 26  K.  Weinhauer, ‘Der Westberliner “Underground”: Kneipen, Drogen und Musik’ in Rotaprint 25 (ed.), Agit 883, 72–83, 73; Sontheimer and Wensierski, Berlin, 63–64. 27  On the position of local politicians and officials regarding Kreuzberg’s precarious state, see H.  Häußermann and A.  Kapphan, Berlin: Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt? Sozialräumlicher Wandel seit 1990 (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2002), 78; on the spatial and socioeconomic situation of Kreuzberg around 1970, see H.  Kaak, Kreuzberg (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1988), 9–40, and 128–133; H.  Spode, ‘Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs’ in H.  Engel e.a. (eds.), Geschichtslandschaft Berlin: Orte und Ereignisse. 5 Kreuzberg (Berlin: Nicolai, 1994), xi-xxxi, xxvi-xxviii. 28  Lang, Mythos, 123–145; Dühspol, Kleine, 127. See for instance also the special section on Kreuzberg in the 1980 first edition of the travel guide book from the West Berlin leftalternative zitty magazine: L. Moos, Anders Reisen, Berlin: ein Reisebuch in den Alltag von zitty (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1980), 190–198. The guidebook proved to be highly popular among left-alternative adherents, as it reached its third reprint already in 1982, amounting to 50.000 prints in total by then. 29  Reichardt, Authentitizät und Gemeinschaft, 519.

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protest, since here the local government had far-reaching plans to demolish the old urban structure in favor of a compartmentalized Post-Fordist city plan, modern high-rise, higher rents, and a massive new city highway.30 Through their struggles, the squatter movement came to identify itself with the preservation of the traditional buildings and the Kreuzberger Mischung (Kreuzberg mix) of working and living in the direct vicinity.31 Their hard-fought struggles eventually gave Kreuzberg a reputation within the global squatter movement, as in 1981 foreign squatters visited the Tuwat congress of the West Berlin squatter scene.32 Among punks, eastern Kreuzberg gained a mythical reputation as a punk paradise. To many punks, Kreuzberg became the benchmark to which other West Berlin neighborhoods were compared. When Punkhouse, the first West Berlin punk venue in the trendy and commercial district of Charlottenburg, closed in 1978, the West Berlin punk scene chose Kreuzberg as their new place to be. Punks and their Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) and Geniale Dilletanten33 successors (the West German new wave and West Berlin post-punk variants) felt that the grittiness and minimalism of the newly opened underground music venue SO36 suited their identities.34 Through their early visits to SO36, they came to feel that the neighborhood also suited their identities. Although one part of the early punks mistrusted Kreuzberg, as they despised its older left-alternatives as dogmatic ‘hippies’,35 others were attracted to the anarchist undercurrent of left-alternative Kreuzberg and the freedom to roam and do as they

30  Kaak, Kreuzberg, 128; C.  McDougall, ‘In the Shadow of the Wall: Urban Space and Everyday Life in Kreuzberg’ in T. Brown and L. Anton (eds.), Between the Avant-Garde and the Everyday: Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 154–173. 31  H. Hochmuth, ‘The Return of Berlin-Kreuzberg: Brought Back from the Margins by Memory’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies vol. 25 (2017) no. 4, 470–480, 476–477. 32  AG Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung: aus den ersten 23 Jahren (fourth edition; Berlin, Hamburg & Göttingen: Assozation A, 2008), 54–56. 33  ‘Dilletanten’ was misspelled on purpose by the artists themselves, in order to convey the dilettante and avant-garde spirit of the scene. 34  See for instance P. Radszuhn, ‘Good Night, Ladies’ in Sub Opus 36 e.V. (ed.), SO36: 1978 bis heute (Berlin & Mainz: Ventil Verlag, 2016), 91–93, 91. 35  See for instance G. Meijer, Berlin, Punk, PVC: die unzensierte Geschichte (Berlin: Neues Leben, 2016), 98–100.

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pleased.36 According to a West Berlin police report from 1981, punks were evenly distributed over West Berlin in 1981 (almost 70 percent still lived with their parents). Still, Kreuzberg became their most important gathering place.37 And although there were lively scenes from other areas like Spandau and Gropiusstadt, many West Berlin punks still took the trouble of commuting up to a couple of hours to visit Kreuzberg and its growing number of punk venues, because here they felt that they could really immerse themselves in punk culture.38 This image of Kreuzberg as a home for alternative youth cultures still holds sway within wider youth culture. For instance, the yearly celebration of International Worker’s Day (May 1) currently attracts youngsters from all over the world, with festivities in the streets by day and demonstrations and sometimes riots during the evening and night. As will be shown, the youth cultures themselves would play an important part in perpetuating this mythical image until today. Sensation: The Global Mythification of Alternative Eastern Kreuzberg During the 1980s Despite the fact that youth cultures appropriated the neighborhood and developed the idea of eastern Kreuzberg as their home, these developments more or less went unnoticed by a West German and global audience until around 1980. The poor and self-contained neighborhood could easily be forgotten, tucked away in a corner of the Berlin Wall, in a city behind 36  U.  Rehberg, ‘Katapult’, Rockmusik: Zeitung der AG Rockmusik vol. 1 (1979) no. 4, 13–21, 14; Lena, ‘Die Ätztussis Story von Lena’ in Rotten Totten Records (ed.), Ätztussis (LP booklet; Berlin: Rotten Totten Records, 2005), 2–4, 2; A. Heske, ‘Von Gropiusstadt nach K36 – Punk in Kreuzberg 1978–1982’ in Weird System (ed.), Punk Rock Bibel Berlin (CD booklet; Hamburg: Weird System 2002), 10–17, 10. 37  R.  Brechtner, ‘Punker- und Popperkriminalität in Berlin: ein Erfahrungsbericht’, Der Kriminalist vol. 13 (1981), 320–323, 322. This percentage of punks living with their parents did not differentiate from the overall percentage of all West German adolescents living at home, which was 71 percent in 1981, see: A.  Fischer e.a., Jugend ’81: Lebensentwürfe, Alltagskulturen, Zukunftsbilder (Hamburg: Leske & Budrich, 1981), 105. 38  Frank Lindner, ‘Sound of the Suburbs 2: Probegepogt aus Spandau 1978–1989’ in Weird System (ed.), Punk Rock Bibel Berlin, 44–47, 44; J.  Hiller, ‘Aggressive Rockproduktionen: das Kult-Punklabel aus den Achtzigern’, Ox-Fanzine vol. 104 (2012), www.ox-anzine.de/web/itv/4455/interviews.212.html (accessed: June 15, 2018); Heske, ‘Von Gropiusstadt nach K36’, 13–14; O. Kühl, Laut und betrunken: Erinnerungen an meine wilde Punk-Jugend (Gelnhausen: Wagner, 2011), 27.

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the Iron Curtain. In December 1980, however, massive squatter riots suddenly catapulted Kreuzberg’s alternative image into national and international spotlights. In accordance with the decision environment of preference construction, press media, pop culture, and the tourism industry influenced public perceptions on the neighborhood with sensational accounts and images of countercultures that had converged in eastern Kreuzberg. Among a global audience, this fueled fear and moral panic, but also excitement. Through these personal sentiments, people became invested in the image of Kreuzberg as West Germany’s ultimate alternative neighborhood during the 1980s. Around 1980, West Berlin’s image in general became increasingly defined by shocking media reports and visuals in world-famous outlets, like the National Geographic magazine, which showed young protesters rampaging through a deteriorating city.39 This image of West Berlin as a rebellious and unruly place was especially to be found in Kreuzberg. According to the West German Der Spiegel magazine in December 1980, Kreuzberg had already come to be equated with countercultures by 1980. Yet, it was the escalating scale and aggressiveness of the December 1980 ‘advent riots’ that really startled authorities, press, and audiences. The magazine signaled that the rebels were by then ‘already the second force’ in Kreuzberg, just ‘behind the Turks’ who dominated the neighborhood’s population. Berlin senator of internal affairs Peter Ulrich even lamented that Kreuzberg youth cultures now outrivaled the earlier German student movement.40 Der Spiegel even held that due to its ferocity, the Kreuzberg squatter movement had become a model for other squatter scenes popping up in other West German cities.41 This image of a highly politicized neighborhood inhabited by young rebels kept resonating in the media in the following years, and peaked with worldwide headlines on the full-scale riots on International Worker’s Day 1987 and the days after.

39  E. Pugh, Architecture, Politics, & Identity in Divided Berlin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 233–235. For the period before 1981, see also R. Karapin, Protest Politics in Germany: Movements on the Left and Right since the 1960s (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 66; B. Davis, ‘The City as Theater of Protest: West Berlin and West Germany, 1962–1983’ in G. Prakash and K.M. Kruse (ed.), The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 247–274, 262. 40  ‘“Da packt dich irgendwann ‘ne Wut”’, Der Spiegel vol. 34 (1980) no. 52, 22–32, 24. 41  Ibid., 28.

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The news accounts caused a wider audience to see Kreuzberg as the era’s most rebellious West German neighborhood. This shift is aptly illustrated by three articles on tourists visiting West Berlin. In 1977, Der Spiegel reported that tourists regarded Kreuzberg as a minor tourist attraction, merely associating it with the older Berliner Montmartre art scene, lower-class residents, and Turkish immigrants. According to the magazine: ‘The neighborhood shows tourists during quick visits […] truly the charm of decay and bohemians […] to them, Kreuzberg is synonymous with humble cafes and kebab’.42 In 1979, however, the neighborhood-based Südost Express magazine noticed a slow increase of tour busses visiting the neighborhood. This coincided with an equally slow increase in news reports of subcultural developments in Kreuzberg, and with the major 1978 hit ‘Kreuzberger Nächte’ by the local Gebrüder Blattschluss.43 This Schlager song, which dominated the charts for months, introduced West Germans to the intense nightlife of Kreuzberg bars filled with working-class and left-alternative locals through the eyes of a political economy student.44 However, although the song and news reports increased interest in this peculiar neighborhood, the public’s understanding of the area and its youth cultures remained limited by 1979. According to the Südost Express, tourists could merely recall that Kreuzberg was a threatening place when asked what they knew about the neighborhood. Tour busses only passed highlights like Checkpoint Charlie, ‘but [made] no reference to [subcultural highlights like] Künstlerhaus Bethanien’. Tour guides limited themselves 42  ‘Städtebau: SOS für SO 36’, Der Spiegel vol. 31 (1977) no. 13, 216–223, 218. In fact, to the global tourism industry, the alternativeness of Kreuzberg proved to be too shocking. Despite intensified subcultural activity, in the established travel guidebooks Michelin and Baedeker from the 1960s to the 1980s, this side of the neighborhood is not mentioned at all as the publishers aimed at traditional and conventional tourists. These guidebooks were published when ‘off-the-beaten-track tourism’ had not permeated the industry yet, which was still dominated by heritage tourism focusing on traditional and distinguished cultural highlights. The Kreuzberg youth cultures did not fit these criteria, and were deemed too shocking and unconventional. One of the first travel guidebook series that would incorporate Kreuzberg’s alternative image and that was not aimed at a subcultural or younger audience was DuMont in 1983. Yet, DuMont did also not cater to a wider audience, as its target audience mostly consisted of ‘left intellectual bourgeois middle class’ people, see Lang, Mythos, 139. 43  ‘Kreuzberg sehen – und sterben’, Südost Express vol. 3 (1979) no. 10, 6–7, 7. 44  Hochmuth, Kiezgeschichte: Friedrichshain und Kreuzberg im geteilten Berlin (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2017), 280–84.

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in mentioning, for instance, that 45 percent of the population was younger than thirty years (and mostly Turkish). Although housing problems were only briefly summarized, nothing was said about the struggles between squatters and authorities. No further questions were asked by tourists either.45 After the riots of December 1980, however, tourists followed the news in its trail and flocked to Kreuzberg to see for themselves what was happening. In 1981, the Südost Express cited a visitor who stated that it was the shocking media reports that urged him to come over: ‘We have seen soooo [sic] much about you on television. And that has to be so shocking for you here, with all these riots and such’. The vividness of the reports appealed so much to the public’s imagination that one tourist proclaimed: ‘I find squatters really worth photographing, it’s interesting to take [these photos] home and throw slides on the wall and look at them’. Apart from these thrill seekers, a few genuinely interested tourists even came to visit squats and ask their residents about their situation.46 Around the same time, as the West German pop culture industry discovered that the thrill of the neighborhood could be exploited for commercial goals, more and more young West Germans also came to adopt the image of Kreuzberg as a sensational alternative area. Popular teen and pop magazines, such as Bravo and Sounds, celebrated the neighborhood as one of the most important hotbeds for the groundbreaking West German punk and NDW scenes.47 Yet, the publications did not so much have one view of the neighborhood, but published whatever they saw fit to print on a commercial basis. Thus, at other moments, these  magazines portrayed Kreuzberg negatively as a threatening, violent, and impoverished hellhole. More conventional adolescents, especially the poppers (the West German variants of American preppies), became increasingly concerned by these reports and frowned upon the neighborhood and its youth cultures. To the poppers, who preferred posh and trendy shopping and nightlife  ‘Kreuzberg sehen’, 6.  ‘Touristen in Kreuzberg: Schlangestehen am Ort des Geschehens’, Südost Express vol. 5 (1981) no. 7, 7. 47  See for instance A. Hilsberg, ‘Neue Deutsche Welle: aus grauer Städte Mauern’, Sounds vol. 14 (1979) no. 10, http://www.highdive.de/over/sounds3.htm (accessed: June 20, 2018); Ibid., ‘Dicke Titten und Avantgarde (Teil 2): aus grauer Städte Mauern’, Sounds vol. 14 (1979) no 11, www.highdive.de/over/sounds4.htm (accessed: June 20, 2018); Ibid., ‘Macher? Macht? Moneten?: Aus grauer Städte Mauern (Teil 3)’, Sounds vol. 14 (1979) no. 12, www.highdive.de/over/sounds5.htm (accessed: June 20, 2018). 45 46

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environments like the West Berlin Kurfürstendamm area,48 Kreuzberg and its youth cultures represented ‘the latest filth’.49 Yet, the sensational images also prompted many youngsters to embrace Kreuzberg as an exciting and adventurous area. For instance, in the Berlin für junge Leute (Berlin for young people) guidebooks, first published by the publicly sponsored Informationzentrum Berlin (Information Center Berlin) in 1981, the local official tourism industry presented Kreuzberg as an exciting alternative neighborhood.50 It proved to be highly popular and profitable, with German and identical English editions appearing almost every year after, as well as occasional French editions. The guidebook contained a special section on ‘alternative Berlin’, pinpointing Kreuzberg as the most subcultural neighborhood of West Berlin. Here, ‘traces of alternatives [were] visible and everywhere’, while ‘new social, economic, and environmental models’ were well-developed.51 Furthermore, compared to the trendy and posh Kurfürstendamm area, which was the conventional place for going out, the guidebook stated that Kreuzberg’s nightlife was more exciting, cheaper, and notorious, especially around Oranienstraße.52 Historical Credibility: Perpetuating the Image of Alternative Eastern Kreuzberg Although subcultural Kreuzberg received worldwide attention in the 1980s, this did not mean that Kreuzberg’s alternative image would automatically survive in popular consciousness for several decades. In line with the construction of preferences, the conservation of fading memories, the 48  O.  Leitner, West-Berlin! Westberlin! Berlin (West)!: Die Kultur, die Szene, die Politik. Erinnerungen an eine Teilstadt der 70er und 80er Jahre (Berlin: Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, 2002), 102; and B. Mrozek, ‘Vom Ätherkrieg zur Popperschlacht: die Popscape West-Berlin als Produkt der urbanen und geopolitischen Konfliktsgeschichte’, Zeithistorische Forschungen vol. 11 (2014) no. 2, 288–299, 295. 49  On the impressions of poppers regarding eastern Kreuzberg and its punks, see ‘Krawall! Punker jagen Popper! Warum sie sich gegenseitig nicht riechen können’, Bravo vol. 25 (1980) no. 47, 8–10, 10. 50  In the 1980s, the local official tourism industry even incorporated a small amount of imagery of more extreme youth cultures such as punks in its tourism campaigns for the city of West Berlin, see K. Siebenhaar and T. Wegmann, Berlin wirbt! Metropolenwerbung zwischen Verkehrsreklame und Stadtmarketing, 1920–1995 (Berlin: FAB Verlag, 1995), 40–41. 51  E. Luuk, Berlin für junge Leute (Berlin: Informationszentrum Berlin, 1981), 22. 52   Ibid., 40–41; Ibid., Berlin für junge Leute (Berlin: Informationszentrum Berlin, 1987), 89.

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glorification of the neighborhood’s sensational past, and continuing ideological debates and struggles over Kreuzberg’s historicized alternative identity would deeply ingrain Kreuzberg’s alternative image in global cultural memory. In fact, in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, youth cultures themselves doubted whether eastern Kreuzberg could still be their home. After the GDR regime collapsed, former East Berlin became a semi-lawless environment with large-scale vacancies that offered new opportunities for youths to experiment, thus attracting many West Berlin squatters to eastern Berlin. They mainly settled in the cheaper inner-city districts of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain, which already had known low-key alternative enclaves during the totalitarian GDR regime.53 In its trail followed other scenes that had by then become closely related to the squatters, such as punks and early techno fanatics. This exodus was felt by those left behind, such as music venue SO36 that had to cope with a decrease in visitors in the early 1990s.54 In turn, it was also not a foregone conclusion that the wider public would keep seeing and remembering Kreuzberg as an undisputable alternative neighborhood. In the 1990s and 2000s, as youth cultures spread throughout eastern Berlin, many discussions flared up regarding the extent to which this image was still true compared to other neighborhoods. For instance, while the Michelin travel guidebooks still championed the neighborhood as Berlin’s ultimate youth culture neighborhood,55 the authors of Berlin für junge Leute and Rough Guides instead called this image in question. Berlin für junge Leute argued that although the neighborhood might still be subcultural, even when compared to the more trendsetting and alternative Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain, the image that Kreuzberg was heavily characterized by ‘squatters, punks, riots, communes, [and]

53  Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin: von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt?, 117–118; Hochmuth, Kiezgeschichte, 317–318; azozomox and A. Kuhn, ‘The Cycles of Squatting in Berlin (1969–2016)’ in M.A. Martinez López, The Urban Politics of Squatters’ Movements (Basingstoke & Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 145–164, 152–153. 54  A. Waldt, ‘Trockeneis und Tränengas’ in W. Farkas, S. Seidl and H. Zwirner, Nachtleben Berlin: 1974 bis heute (Berlin: Metrolit, 2013), 128–133; R. Jahnke, ‘Alles auf Anfang’ in Sub Opus 36 e.V. (ed.), SO36, 233–243, 233. 55   Manufacture française des pneumatiques Michelin, Berlin, Potsdam (Paris: Pneu Michelin, 1997), 178; H. Payelle, Berlin: week-end. Michelin, Le Guide Vert (Paris: Michelin, 2017), 88.

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long nights’ might have become a cliché by that time.56 In 1998, Rough Guides argued that while the neighborhoods Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain ‘aren’t dramatically different from those of western Berlin [like Kreuzberg] they have a sense of freshness, and are less jaded and established’. It was a sentiment that remained dominant to the end of the 2000s.57 Others, like the authors of Baedeker, went even further and proclaimed that eastern Kreuzberg’s days as an alternative youth culture neighborhood were numbered and instead championed Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain as the new alternative hotspots.58 That the image of alternative Kreuzberg has survived until today, then, is first due to ongoing subcultural activities, even in times of forsakenness.59 Second, it was the result of diligent and empowering conservation efforts of grassroots movements who feared in the 1980s and 1990s that their local history and identities would wither away in spite of urban renewal and dominant public discussions on Germany’s national heritage. These efforts included the founding of the Kreuzberg Museum in 1990 (nowadays the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum), where the history of local squatting is permanently displayed alongside the history of everyday life in the neighborhood. It also included the creation of left-­alternative city tours (which ultimately spawned today’s highly popular off-the-beaten-track tours on alternative Kreuzberg) and guidebooks that focused on the neighborhood’s history as a center of antifascist and anti-­capitalist resistance. The conservation efforts also included the preservation of local ‘alternative ways 56  M. Blisse, Berlin für junge Leute (Berlin: Herden Studenreisen, Berlin & Argon, 1996), 74–75; D. Kresse e.a., Berlin für junge Leute (Berlin: Herden Studienreisen, 2006), 134–135. 57  J. Gawthrop and J. Holland, Berlin: The Rough Guide (London: Rough Guides, 1998), 122, 126–128, and 157–158; J. Gawthrop and C. Williams, The Rough Guide to Berlin (New York, London & Delhi: Rough Guides, 2008), 157, 165, 166, and 170. 58  V.  Beck e.a., Berlin (Ostfildern: Baedeker, 1997), 151; R.  Eisenschmidt e.a., Berlin: Potsdam (Ostfildern: Baedeker, 2008), 222–223. 59  In fact, local subcultural activities never really ceased to exist during the 1990s and 2000s. For instance, even though music venue SO36 had to cope with disappointing visitor numbers in the 1990s, and after surviving many shutdowns thereafter, its endurance eventually paid off, and is nowadays regarded as one of the most iconic punk and underground venues in the world, especially after the closure of the first New York punk venue CBGB’s in 2006. While most early techno and other dance clubs popped up in eastern Berlin, eastern Kreuzberg and other parts of the city were not overlooked. Watergate, established in 2002, is nowadays regarded as one of the best techno  clubs in Berlin, which is itself called the ‘techno capital of the world’. Other long-standing subcultural venues include, among others, record store Core Tex Records (since 1990) and the squatted building Köpi (since 1990).

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of life’ through the successful struggles of squatters and other activists, which ultimately served as a model for other alternative people worldwide.60 So, while the wider public questioned in the 1990s and 2000s whether Kreuzberg was still Berlin’s ultimate youth culture neighborhood, these conservation efforts would eventually contribute to the perpetuation of Kreuzberg’s mythical alternative image. Third, while the empowerment of youth cultures sells, so do moral panics and excitement. Seen this way, the neighborhood’s alternative history is also kept alive through news reports, opinion websites, popular history books, oral histories, and memoirs that are aimed at a wider audience,61 as well as other highly popular cultural outputs like movies, novels, comic books, and TV series.62 As the neighborhood’s history makes for a good story, it is often sensationalized or glorified in these outputs as the undisputable historically grown main center of (West) Berlin countercultures, even in cases when they try to convey a more balanced and sincere image. Lastly, due to the continued presence of subcultural activity, the lingering attention of press media, and an increasing memorialization, many ideological discussions have flared up during the last decade, which have turned the neighborhood into ‘an important hothouse of German memory politics’. According to historian Hanno Hochmuth, through these debates, the idea of Kreuzberg as the long-standing alternative  Hochmuth, ‘The Return’, 470–480.  For a recent selection of history books and oral histories that are aimed for a wider audience and in which eastern Kreuzberg plays an important role, see J. Teipel, Verschwende deine Jugend: ein Doku-Roman über den deutschen Punk und New Wave (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001); F.A. Schneider, Als die Welt noch unterging: von Punk zu NDW (Mainz: Ventil, 2007); Hollow Skai, Alles nur geträumt: Fluch und Segen der Neuen Deutschen Welle (Innsbruck: Hannibal, 2009); F. Denk and S. von Thülen, Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno und die Wende (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012); B. Sichtermann and K. Sichtermann, Das ist unser Haus: eine Geschichte der Hausbesetzung (Berlin: Aufbau, 2017). For a recent selection of memoirs of former and aging subcultural actors in which eastern Kreuzberg plays an important role, see the following memoirs: for left-alternatives, see J.C.  Wartenberg, Kreuzberg K36  – Leben in (der) Bewegung: Kreuzberg inside bis zum Fall der Mauer (Bockenem: Lühmann, 2003); for punks, see Meijer, Berlin; for the Geniale Dilletanten scene, see W. Müller, Subkultur Westberlin, 1979–1989: Freizeit (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2013); and M. Reeder, Hollow Skai and J.A. Hoppe, B-Book: Lust und Sound in West-Berlin, 1979–1989 (Hamburg: Edel Germany, 2015); for the early techno scene after the fall of the Berlin Wall, see U.  Gutmair, Die ersten Tage von Berlin: der Sound der Wende (Stuttgart: Ullstein, 2015); and Westbam, Die Macht der Nacht (Berlin: Ullstein, 2016). 62  See footnote 4. 60 61

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neighborhood has ultimately returned ‘from the margins’.63 Illustrative of this are posts on online platforms where, of all places in the world, Berlin and especially Kreuzberg have become ultimate symbols of either moral superiority or depravity. For instance, according to a review from the progressive-­ minded Italian David M. on the tourist review website TripAdvisor, Kreuzberg residents, among them ‘hippies’ and former ‘anarchists’, treat their neighbors with an immigrant background with respect, which makes it an emancipated area to him, especially compared to other places: Our cities are in the hands of machines. In Kreuzberg, man still relies on himself. […] Turks and Arabs, but also people from all over the world […] and the various Germans, former anarchists, bourgeoisie, hippies, mix with each other, but not too much, and they do it with respect.64

People on the other end of the political spectrum beg to differ. For instance, the German Mark von Buch argues on the self-proclaimed ‘politically incorrect’ blog www.pi-news.net that Kreuzberg has instead grown into the fool’s paradise of his ideological opponents. Compared to what he perceives to be the moral superiority of traditional Central European culture: Kreuzberg is definitely no longer to be regarded as a place where Central European developed values and behavioral standards apply. Here, a demographic has evolved which is primarily composed of anarchists, leftists, latent and self-declared criminals and crackpots. I hope that this conglomeration of less useful fellow citizens, when Germany is sane again, will be enclosed as the Jurassic Park of dark German times and serve as a warning.65

Eastern Kreuzberg has thus become deeply ingrained within global cultural memory as an undisputable long-standing alternative neighborhood.  Hochmuth, ‘The Return’, 470–480.  David M., ‘Ci ho vissuto nove mesi. Tutto il meglio e’ gia’ stato detto.’, TripAdvisor (version: October 19, 2016), www.tripadvisor.nl/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d191439r429584667-Kreuzberg-Berlin.html (accessed: August 11, 2019). 65  For this quote, see the reaction of Mark von Buch to the following online opinion article: ‘Kreuzberg nicht grüne Hölle, dem grünen Pack gefällt es dort’, Politically Incorrect (version: November 30, 2014), www.pi-news.net/2014/11/kreuzberg-nicht-gruenehoelle-dem-gruenen-pack-gefaellt-es-dort (accessed: August 14, 2019). 63 64

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According to the 2017 edition of Berlin für junge Leute, it is exactly the sensation and conservation of Kreuzberg’s alternative history that have made it a modern ‘scene mecca’ again: ‘with its mixture of creativity, informality and a preference for trash, [Kreuzberg] offers the local scene a well-­ conserved playground and again attracts outsiders in droves’.66 To many the neighborhood’s alternativeness has thus never declined, and this historicization gives the neighborhood credibility as a modern subcultural hotspot. For instance, the historicized trope of former countercultures setting the scene for Kreuzberg’s modern trendsetting milieu is nowadays embraced and reiterated by both the tourism industry and tourists themselves.67 In 2015, almost forty percent of tourists partaking in off-the-­ beaten-track tours stated that they wanted to experience local alternative history.68 Today, the historicized alternative image of subcultural eastern Kreuzberg has, therefore, become one of the two important pillars of the subcultural ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’.

‘Poor, But Sexy’:69 Mythifying Eastern Kreuzberg as a Modern Trendsetting Neighborhood In conjunction with its mythicized historical alternative image, the second pillar of subcultural ‘Mythos Kreuzberg’ revolves around its image as a modern trendsetting neighborhood, a notion that has blossomed in popular consciousness from the end of the 2000s onwards. This reputation is 66  M.  Bienert and A.  Nachama, Berlin für junge Leute (Berlin: Herden Studienreisen, 2017), 120. 67  Rault and Gandiol, Berlin, 13, 65, 66 and 130; G. Buddée e.a., Berlin: perfekte Tage unter den Linden (Ostfildern: Karl Baedeker, 2017), 11, 138 and 147–148; P. Sullivan, The Rough Guide to Berlin (London: Rough Guides, 2017), 8 and 126; Bienert and Nachama, Berlin, 71, 120, and 178; compare to the TripAdvisor review webpage of Kreuzberg, ‘Kreuzberg’, TripAdvisor, www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187323-d191439Reviews-Kreuzberg-Berlin.html (accessed: August 11, 2019). 68  S. Hälikkä, The Motivating Factors in Alternative Touring and the Varying Image of a Tourist Destination. Case study: Original Berlin Tours and Berlin (thesis; Kerava 2015), 29–30. 69  Quote taken from  Berlin’s ex-mayor Klaus Wowereit (2001–2014), through which he inventively captured Berlin’s reputation. Wowereit had a big influence on the official marketing and promotion campaigns of the city of Berlin in the 2000s and early 2010s, in which this image was applied to the city and in which the neighborhood of eastern Kreuzberg came to  play an  important role. See C.  Colomb, Staging the  New Berlin: Place Marketing and  the  Politics of  Urban Reinvention Post-1989 (Hoboken: Taylor and  Francis, 2013), 222–269.

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aptly described by tourism scholars Johannes Novy and Sandra Huning as Kreuzberg being a modern ‘[hub] of Berlin’s alternative, bohemian, and creative scene,’ and a place where people go ‘for a fun night out or a shopping spree at the district’s broad array of […] specialised stores’.70 Through these modern trendsetting features, many people worldwide came to regard eastern Kreuzberg as the most unique subcultural area of all neighborhoods worldwide. Within the decision environment, these preferences have been influenced by the gentrification of other neighborhoods (which unfolded slower in Kreuzberg during the 1990s and 2000s), as well as an increased attention of press media and the tourism and pop industries for the area during that period. Together, they have influenced people’s personal sentiments, and as a result, many subcultural actors, creatives, and other people became invested in the idea of Kreuzberg as a righteously trendsetting neighborhood where Berlin, urban life, and youth cultures can be experienced in their most exciting and authentic ways. After years of lingering subcultural activity, the end of the 2000s saw a turning point after which local youth cultures came to prefer Kreuzberg as their home again. This development contributed heavily to the return of eastern Kreuzberg’s myth as a youth culture neighborhood. While the run-down districts Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain were gentrified in the 1990s and 2000s and thus became increasingly expensive, sanitized, and ‘bourgeois’, Kreuzberg was one of the few inner-city districts to experience a slower gentrification rate. Youth cultures therefore came to prefer eastern  Kreuzberg again for its  affordable housing opportunities. Moreover, through the remaining subcultural infrastructure,71 they also came to rediscover and prefer Kreuzberg for its remaining tolerant environment for radical and outspoken youth cultures, its exciting and prevailing forms of urban life and nightlife, and its ‘legendary radical mystique’.72 In the 2000s, the relatively ungentrified Kreuzberg also came to be preferred by young creative people such as artists and gallery owners, a development which  evenly contributed to Kreuzberg’s myth as a 70  Quotes taken from J. Novy and S. Huning, ‘New Tourism (Areas) in the ‘New Berlin” in R.  Maitland and P.  Newman (eds.), World Tourism Cities: Developing Tourism Off the Beaten Track (New York: 2009, Routledge), 87–108, 94 and 102. 71  For subcultural activities that remained in Kreuzberg between the 1980s and the 2010s, see footnote 59. 72  See for instance D. Drissel, ‘Anarchist Punks Resisting Gentrification: Countercultural Contestations of Space in the New Berlin’, The International Journal of the Humanities vol. 8 (2011) no. 11, 19–44, 32, 34, and 37.

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trendsetting neighborhood. These creatives preferred to move to a tolerant, affordable, historical, and experimental inner-city area where they could easily network and mingle with each other. In the words of social geographer Jamie Peck, creatives ‘want edgy cities, not edge cities’,73 something they could find in eastern Kreuzberg.74 Their appropriation of the neighborhood was encouraged by programs of the Berlin senate supporting startups and the creative industries in impoverished inner-city areas to jumpstart the local economy.75 These creatives set up various new businesses and establishments, such as fashion boutiques and dance clubs, providing the neighborhood with a new élan. By reviving the neighborhood, the creatives presented themselves as ‘cultural taste makers’, and championed Kreuzberg as a fashionable and hip area.76 Press media, tourism, and pop industries quickly incorporated Kreuzberg’s renewed subcultural and creative image into their publication and marketing strategies, as it perfectly served their own commercial goals.77 This successfully catapulted Berlin and eastern Kreuzberg as 73  J.  Peck, ‘Struggling with the Creative Class’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research vol. 29 (2005) no. 4, 740–770, 745. 74  B.  Heebels and I. van Aalst, ‘Creative Clusters in Berlin: Entrepreneurship and the Quality of Place in Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography vol. 92 (2010) no. 4, 347–363, 360–361. 75  R. Ebert and K.R. Kunzmann, ‘Kulturwirtschaft, kreative Räume und Stadtentwicklung in Berlin’, disP-The Planning Review vol. 43 (2007) no. 171, 64–79; Colomb, Staging the New Berlin, 232; M. Pradel-Miquel, ‘Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social Innovation and Economic Development in Two Neighbourhoods of Berlin’, City, Culture and Society vol. 8 (2017), 13–19. 76  A. Holm, ‘Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream’ in M. Bernt, B. Grell and A. Holm (eds.), The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2013), 171–187, 174; on the concept of ‘cultural tastemakers’ in the process of gentrification, see J.J. Palen and B. London, Gentrification, Displacement, and Neighborhood Revitalization (Albany: State University of New  York Press, 1984), 22; I.  Bader and M.  Bialluch, Gentrification and the Creative Class in Berlin-Kreuzberg: Shifts in Urban Renewal Policy from the 1980s to the Present’ in L. Porter and K. Shaw (eds.), Whose Urban Renaissance? (London: Routledge, London), 93–102. 77  On the tourism industries, see for instance the travel guidebook series used in this chapter, as well as Colomb, Staging the New Berlin, 239–248; on the pop culture industries, see for instance footnote 4, as well as I. Bader, ‘Subculture – Pioneer for Reindustrialization by the Music Industry or Counterculture’, in R. Paloscia and INURA (eds.), Contested Metropolos: Seven Cities at the Beginning of the 21st Century (Birkhäuser: Basel, 2004), 73–77; and I.  Bader and A.  Scharenberg. ‘The Sound  of Berlin: Subculture and the Global Music Industry’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research vol. 34 (2010) no. 1, 76–91.

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trendsetting places in popular consciousness. TripAdvisor reviews are illustrative of this development. Most reviews on subcultural Kreuzberg are highly positive. From these reviews, four central lines of reasoning can be abstracted in which people reveal how they come to prefer Kreuzberg over other places. First, many reviewers hold Kreuzberg to be the epitome of what urban life in Berlin is truly about. As Russian reviewer Angelina G. puts it: Kreuzberg perfectly conveys the whole essence of Berlin – free, open, trendy. A huge number of bars […] interesting graffiti on the walls, popular clubs, etc. […] rather dirty. However, this is part of its charm =).78

Second, out of all Berlin neighborhoods, admirers deem Kreuzberg to be the most subcultural area. For instance, according to Italian reviewer Christian B.: The district Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is the liveliest in Berlin […] Friedrichshain is very pleasant […] Kreuzberg is a world apart. A high concentration of nightclubs [and] bars […] make [Kreuzberg] the hub of Berlin nightlife. For street art lovers, Berlin is a paradise. Kreuzberg represents the highpoint with works by the greatest artists in the sector.79

Third, admiring reviewers even hold Kreuzberg to be a unique subcultural hotspot compared to other neighborhoods in the world. As reviewer Syerak from Great Britain puts it: This is a place for artists and art lovers alike. It’s a very community feel [sic] […] [It] can sometimes be compared to Camden town in London but is it’s [sic] own little world. You can spend hours in the boutique shops or looking at street art. Meet musicians and experience a real Berlin.80

78  Angelina G., ‘Дух Берлина’, TripAdvisor (version: January 5, 2016), www.tripadvisor. nl/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d191439-r337601222-Kreuzberg-Berlin.html (accessed: August 11, 2019). 79  Christian B., ‘Friedrichshain:il distretto più bello e vivo di berlino’, TripAdvisor (version: February 10, 2013), www.tripadvisor.nl/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d442866r151805187-Friedrichshain-Berlin.html (accessed: August 11, 2019). 80  Syerak, ‘I love this place’, TripAdvisor (version: August 24, 2014), www.tripadvisor.nl/ ShowUserReviews-g187323-d191439-r223994094-Kreuzberg-Berlin.html (accessed: August 11, 2019).

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Lastly, some reviewers implicitly prefer Kreuzberg over other places in the world. To them, a comparison would be futile, as the neighborhood’s subcultural uniqueness is self-evident. For instance, reviewer Michael M. from Great Britain argues to: Look no further, this is THE neighborhood! What can I say, except that I fell under the spell of this district: its incredibly relaxed atmosphere with its small cafes, its record shops […] its “alternative” side […] Everything! […] let yourself be absorbed by its special atmosphere.81

These reviews show that admirers champion Kreuzberg because they feel that urban life here is still authentic and exciting, which they relate to its trendsetting power. Their association of true urban life is emphasized with fashionable buzzwords such as ‘trendy’, ‘young’, ‘creative’, vibrant’, and ‘cool’. Even terms that are traditionally used to portray the neighborhood as a historical center for countercultures, such as ‘alternative’, ‘rebellious’, and ‘unconventional’, have become employed in a fashionable manner to mirror the neighborhood’s supposed authenticity and excitement with the ‘artificial world’ of gentrified and bourgeois neighborhoods. To these admirers, this notion of a true urban way of life is especially represented in Kreuzberg through its concentration of youth cultures, artists, musicians, nightlife venues, specialized shops, and street art. So, just like the creative class, more and more people have come to appreciate what Peck has called ‘edgy cities, not edge cities’. Compared to the fears and moral panics surrounding 1980s Kreuzberg, people have become appreciative of a Kreuzberg that seems risky, yet that poses no real threat. Through normalization and the toning down of its rawer edges,82 subcultural Kreuzberg therefore has come to cater to the preferences of wider society as a welcoming trendsetting neighborhood with an interesting though distant countercultural past.

81  Michael M., ‘Cherchez pas plus loin, c’est LE quartier!’, TripAdvisor (version: July 10, 2014), www.tripadvisor.nl/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d191439-r214687114-KreuzbergBerlin.html (accessed: August 11, 2019). 82  On the acceptance of radical youth cultures through the process of normalization, see T.  Johansson, J. Andreasson and C.  Mattsson, ‘From Subcultures to Common Culture: Bodybuilders, Skinheads, and the Normalization of the Marginal’, Sage Open vol. 7 (2017) no. 2, 1–9.

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Today, despite the fact that eastern Kreuzberg has also become increasingly gentrified and touristified, many people worldwide still perceive the neighborhood as an undisputable subcultural area. For instance, although Kreuzberg tends to get included less and less in ‘coolest neighborhoods’ lists in 2018 and 2019 in favor of relatively less-gentrified areas like the Berlin districts Neukölln or Wedding, some compilers still refuse to exclude the area from their lists.83 In turn, Kreuzberg inhabitants, such as squatters, have become heavily invested in saving the peculiar sociocultural makeup and affordability of their neighborhood from the disadvantages of gentrification and touristification—struggles that can also be found in other gentrified parts of Berlin.84 Moreover, many people on TripAdvisor still like to champion Kreuzberg as a trendsetting and alternative place.85 Thus, by the end of the 2010s, to many people eastern Kreuzberg has become an undisputable youth culture neighborhood—a place of hip, happening, and alternativeness.

Conclusion The mythical image of eastern Kreuzberg as a genuine  and quintessential youth culture neighborhood has thus, to a large extent, been shaped through the construction of preferences, a process in which shared choices and preferences of individuals and groups are shaped through a 83  For instance, Jordan Bishop, who writes about tourism destinations on the influential Forbes, still includes Kreuzberg in his ‘coolest neighborhoods’ list of 2019, see J.  Bishop, ‘The 15 Coolest Neighborhoods in the World in 2019’, How I Travel (version: September 17, 2019), www.howitravel.co/the-15-coolest-neighborhoods-in-the-world-in-2016 (accessed: December 3, 2019). 84  C.  Wilder, ‘In Berlin, a Grass-Roots Fight Against Gentrification as Rents Soar’, The New  York Times (Version: March 18, 2017), www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/world/ europe/berlin-rent-fight-against-gentrification.html (accessed: December 3, 2019); N. Holmes, ‘A Network of Activists Fighting Gentrification in Kreuzberg – and Winning’, Give Something Back to Berlin (version: March 19, 2018), gsbtb. org/2018/03/19/a-network-of-volunteers-fighting-gentrification-in-kreuzberg-and-winning/ (accessed: December 3, 2019); ‘Berlin Squatters Take over Series of Buildings to Protest Gentrification’, Deutsche Welle (version: May 20, 2018), www.dw.com/en/berlinsquatters-take-over-series-of-buildings-to-protest-gentrification/a-43864221 (accessed: December 3, 2019); B. Woolsey, ‘Berlin Anti-Gentrification Activists Fight to Keep … The Local Aldi’, The Guardian (version: May 9, 2019), www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/ may/09/berlin-anti-gentrification-activists-fight-to-keep-the-local-aldi (accessed: December 3, 2019). 85  ‘Kreuzberg’, TripAdvisor.

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combination of decision environments and personal sentiments. As a result, they come to believe—and become invested—in a particular representation of a phenomenon. In the case of eastern Kreuzberg, this can be seen in both the neighborhood’s historicized alternative image and its image as a modern trendsetting neighborhood. From the 1960s to recent times, the decision environment has offered people numerous places out of which many came to choose and prefer eastern Kreuzberg as a genuine youth culture neighborhood. Within the decision environment, many people have also been influenced in their choices and preferences by various external forces and actors. For instance, the media framed the neighborhood as the ultimate hellhole or as the most exciting place to be due to rebellious youth cultures, while the youth cultures themselves framed and conserved the idea of the neighborhood as the ultimate empowering role model for creating a just society. Moreover, external forces and actors such as a delayed gentrification of the neighborhood, successful city marketing campaigns of the tourism industry, and a surviving subcultural scene and atmosphere have all shaped many people’s choices in championing Kreuzberg as an alternative and trendsetting place. Combined with this decision environment, personal sentiments such as existing preferences, knowledge, memories, and feelings have also shaped many people’s preferences in mythifying eastern Kreuzberg as a youth culture neighborhood. Based on existing personal preferences, more open-minded people tend to like Kreuzberg for its emancipating spirit, while more conservative people tend to disapprove of Kreuzberg and its countercultures as a chaotic and semi-lawless area. Adolescents tend to prefer Kreuzberg as their place to be when it suits their already existing ideals and identities, or when their preferred youth cultures already have appropriated the neighborhood. Through existing knowledge, people have come to assess to what extent eastern Kreuzberg is a genuine subcultural area or not. For instance, youth cultures tend to prefer eastern Kreuzberg as they come to know of its affordability, its subcultural infrastructure, or its freedom to roam. Wider audiences base their preferences on the knowledge they distill from external sources such as press media, pop culture, and the tourism industries. Furthermore, memories play an important role in the mythicification of the neighborhood. Subcultural actors, for example, have become invested in the neighborhood’s image and preserve its memories of local resistance. In part because of this, many people have kept remembering Kreuzberg as an alternative neighborhood. Finally, through their feelings, people have come to either appreciate

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Kreuzberg as the most exciting neighborhood or to fear it as the most threatening place through its countercultural undercurrents. Although the concept of preference construction can be a useful instrument in showing how myths are shaped, it can only do so to a certain extent as it can be challenging to assess all preference constructions in a myth-making process, since every individual person experiences the world differently. This can result in an infinite amount of different preference constructions. It is therefore important for researchers to demarcate and determine a framework or baseline of the representations that a myth entails, much like this chapter has focused on eastern Kreuzberg’s representations of historicized alternativeness and modern trendsetting power. Moreover, since experiences can vary between individuals, not every person becomes invested in the same myth. They can be contested, as there can be many similar or contradicting options to choose from. The disagreements and competitiveness surrounding myths can therefore make it hard to assess whether something is mythicized or not. This is where the concept of preference construction becomes helpful, as it can reveal how a certain group of people collectively adopts a certain representation as true or exceptional through a shared construction of preferences, thereby becoming collectively invested in the same myth—whether it is factually true or not. This, then, is the case with Kreuzberg. Although some people prefer other neighborhoods, through the construction of preferences many people worldwide have become collectively invested in the neighborhood’s reputation, thereby turning eastern Kreuzberg into a subcultural myth. Thus, the collective construction of preferences has to a large extent contributed to the mythification of subcultural eastern Kreuzberg. What can be abstracted from this case study is that what appeals the most to people about youth cultures are their outspoken and elusive natures. The result is a complex range of interactions that continuously calls on people to ask themselves how they relate to them. People thus make choices and cultivate preferences when they take a position regarding youth cultures. When people become collectively  invested in certain shared ideas and images, subcultural myths are born.

Index1

A Aalen, 211 Aarseth, Øystein ‘Euronymous,’ 152, 161, 163, 166, 168 Abbey Road, 159 Aboriginals, 186, 187 Adam X, 137 Afrika Bambaataa, 139 Afrocentrism, 178 Air Force Academy, 120 Algeria, 237, 256 Alig, Michael, 13, 127–137, 128n1, 139–146, 148, 149 All People’s Congress, 189 Altamont (California), 102 Althusser, Louis, 43 America, 81, 82n4, 84–86, 89, 90, 95, 98, 101, 102, 221, 247, 255 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 111, 120 American International Pictures (AIP), 94

American Motorcycle Association (AMA), 81, 83, 86 Amphetamine, 46 Amsterdam, 216, 218, 218n4, 219n5, 225 Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany, 208 Ancient Rites, 166 Andreasson, Magne, 152, 163, 287n82 Anti-Nazi League, 70 Anti-Semitism, 163 Apartheid, 188 Appropriation, 23, 28, 32, 220, 228, 239, 240, 244, 245, 247, 255, 270, 272, 285 Arab hip hop, 238, 251, 253 Arabian Knigthz, 233 Arab Spring, 15, 235–259 Archive of Youth Cultures, 202 Arnold, John, 121 Arnold, Laura, 121

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 B. van der Steen, T. P. F. Verburgh (eds.), Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7

291

292 

INDEX

Arts and Humanities Research Council, 25 Asia, 156, 236n3 Astro Earl, 140, 142 Australia, 60, 103, 186, 187 Authenticity, 6, 35–53, 153, 198, 239, 247, 270–274, 287 Autonomy, 46, 68, 115 Ayah, 244 B Baas, Jos Alderse, 220 Back in Control Training Center, 71, 73 Bad Brains, 184 Baedeker, 264n8, 280 Bahrain, 236 Baily, Fenton, 132 Ball subculture, 133 Baltimore, 12, 105–124 Baltimore Police Department (BPD), 12, 106, 110, 111, 119–121, 123, 124 Baltimore Sun, The, 107–109, 112, 115, 122 Bandidos MC, 103 Barbato, Randy, 132 Barger, Ralph ‘Sonny,’ 82n4, 89, 92, 93, 93n37, 103 Barthes, Roland, 23, 37, 41–43, 42n17, 79, 97 Bathory, 155, 165n33 Bazooka, 228 Behavioral Sciences, 267 Beltram, Joey, 137 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 241 Benedek, László, 79, 87 Bergen, 154, 159, 166 Bergen Gay Galla, 159 Berlin, 15, 201, 208, 249, 250, 264, 272, 275, 278, 279, 281, 282, 284–286, 288

Berlin für junge Leute, 278, 279, 283 Berlin Wall, 269, 270, 272, 274 Biafra, Jello, 70 Bibikov, Mike, 220 Biker culture, 29 Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), 5–7, 12, 19–28, 23n18, 30–33, 37, 42–48, 50, 52, 101 Black metal, 13, 14, 16, 151–170 Black Metal Theory, 168, 168n45 Black Panthers, 246 Black Power, 176, 177, 186, 187, 246 Black Rebels Motorcycle Club, 79, 87 Blackwell, Chris, 181 Blekkmetal Festival, 154 Bloomberg Businessweek, 120 Blum, Alan, 106, 107 Bmore, John R, 113, 116, 117 Bono, 182, 183 Boozefighters MC, the, 82 Bos, Alfred, 225 Boston, 41n16 Bouazizi, Mohammad, 241 Bouchard, Gérard, 3n5, 9, 10, 265 Brando, Marlon, 79, 87, 88 Bravo, 277 Breakdance, 235 Breivik, Anders, 164 Bricolage, 23, 43, 46 Brooklyn, 137, 262n2, 268 Bu Kulthoum, 251 Bullit record shop, 222 Burden, Steven, 113 Burzum, 155, 161 Business, 45, 91, 101, 162, 217, 222 C California, 73, 84, 86, 89–91, 100, 102, 103, 191, 244 California Highway Patrol, 83 Canada, 156, 243

 INDEX 

Canonization, 265–267, 266n11 Caribbean, The, 172, 179, 192, 238 Carmichael, Stokely, 246 Carr, E.H., 124 Caruso, Michael, 138 Celtic Frost, 155 Century Media, 161 Charlie Boy, 113 Charlottenburg (Berlin), 271, 273 Checkpoint Charlie, 276 Chicago, 5 Chicago School, 5, 21, 30n47, 43n24, 48, 76 China, 49n51, 175 Chino Braxton, 113 Christian, 13, 152, 152n1, 163, 177, 187 Christie, Ian, 165 Chyno, 251 CitiWatch, 119 City Fun, 226 Civil rights, 86, 246 Clarke, John, 5, 21, 21n10, 24, 26, 28, 44n27, 46, 46n36 Class, 5, 6, 13, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28–31, 43, 71, 72, 92, 93, 129, 136, 139, 142, 181–183, 191, 272, 276, 276n42 Clegg, Johnny, 176 Clinton, Hillary, 247 Club kids scene, 13, 16 Clubland, 127, 134, 139, 147, 148 Club of Marrakesh, 212 Club USA, 127, 135 Cody, ‘Buffalo’ Bill, 98 Cold War, 86, 171, 172, 175, 188, 193, 271 Collective representation, 9, 38 Colombian, 13, 128, 129, 132, 133, 147 Colter, D. Doreion, 110 Columbia Pictures, 87 Comancheros, the, 89–90

293

Complex, 262 Corbin, Billy, 139 Corman, Roger, 94, 99 Corpsepaint, 155 Cradle of Filth, 156 Creative class, 130, 135, 287 Cruz, Wilson, 132, 133, 136 Culkin, Macaulay, 132, 136 Cultural consumption, 30, 45 Cultural memory, 4, 9, 13, 14, 228, 282 Cultural politics, 171–194, 252 Cultural production, 28, 31, 69, 236, 254, 266n13 Cultural studies, 67, 129, 238, 259 Cultural theory, 238 D Dahlem (Berlin), 271 Daily News Egypt, 240 DAM, 251 Dank, Serena, 66 Darkthrone, 155, 159 Das Wezen, 228 Davis, Dewayne, 114 Davis, Kevin, 119 de Saussure, Ferdinand, 41, 41n16 Dead Kennedy’s, 70 Depression, 81 Der Spiegel, 275, 276 Deviancy, 21, 27, 51, 64, 92 Dexter, Maury, 98 Dialectics, 247 Difficult for Grils, 224 Dimmu Borgir, 156, 158 Dirt-Bike Task Force, 119 Dischord Records, 69 Disco, 138, 224 Disco 2000, 127, 132, 137, 139 DJ’ing, 235 Dr Rat, 220 Dr. Seuss, 62

294 

INDEX

Druid Hill Avenue (Baltimore), 109, 112, 117 Dubliner, 182 Dunn, Sam, 165 Duque, Andres, 147 Durkheim, Émile, 10, 20, 37, 38, 41, 265n9 Düsseldorf, 201, 202, 204 E East Baltimore, 105–107, 109, 110, 118, 121 Eastern Europe, 156, 182n37 Education, 45, 65, 66, 246 Effenaar, 222 Egypt, 236, 237, 241–243, 256 Eindhoven, 222 Eithun, Bård, 152, 163 Electronic Dance Music (EDM), 29 El Far3i, 242 El Général, 241, 249, 250 Elizabeth (New Jersey), 129, 129n4, 130, 133 Elizabeth High School, 129, 130, 149 Emperor, 152, 153n3, 155, 158, 178 Emulation, 73–75 England, 71, 203, 217, 229, 243 Englestad, Einar, 162 Enron, 121 Enslaved, 158, 166 Espedal, Kristian ‘Gaahl,’ 159 Essentialization, 236 Ethics, 45, 68, 69, 102, 176 Ethiopia, 178 Ethnicity, 31, 140, 142 Eurodisco, 224 European Sociological Association, 35 Evers, Paul, 221

F Factory Communications, 216, 229 Fantoft stave church, 159 Farr, Fred, 90 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 95, 95n42 Federal Republic of Germany, 24n23, 199n5, 280, 282 Fernandez, Ramon, 133 FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, 280 Finnish, 34 Florida, Richard, 134 Fluxus, 216 Fonda, Peter, 94, 99 Food Not Bombs, 70 France, 42, 108, 176 Frankie Bones, 137, 138 Freeway, 244 Freie Universität Berlin, 271 Friedrichshain (Berlin), 279, 280, 284, 286 Frontier myth, 96, 97 Frost, Lee, 99 Future Shock, 137, 138 G Galloping Goose MC, 82 Gandhi, Mahatma, 174 Garcia, Ernie, 136, 142 Garveyism, 178 Gatien, Peter, 127, 135, 136, 138, 139, 142, 148 Gebrüder Blattschluss, 276 Geertz, Clifford, 256 Gender, 13, 31, 86, 136, 137, 139, 153, 174 Geniale Dilletanten, 273 Gentrification, 269, 284, 288, 289 Geofeedia, 119, 120 Geraldo Rivera show, 133

 INDEX 

German Democratic Republic, 204, 272 German Telekom, 212 Ghetto, 1, 240, 246, 254 Gill, Andy, 221, 223, 225, 226 Gilman Street Project, 70 Ginsberg, Allen, 93, 93n37 Giroux, Henry, 141 Gitsie, 141, 143 Giuliani, Rudy, 128 Glitter rock, 25 Global consumer culture, 36 Globalization, 15, 189, 238, 247, 253 Gomez, Marisela B., 109, 114 Goth, 33, 50 Graffiti, 188n64, 220, 235, 243, 286 Gramsci, Antonio, 22, 43, 239n6 Great Britain, 23, 32, 84, 85, 87, 223, 286, 287 Great Plains, the, 98 Green, Seth, 132 Grefe, William, 94 Grey, Zane, 98 Gropiusstadt (Berlin), 274 Grude, Torstein, 165 Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che,’ 173, 174, 188n64 Gulf War, 70 Gypsy Jokers, 89 H Haarlem, 222 Haas, Martijn, 219, 220, 222 Haile Selassie I, 178, 180 Halbwachs, Maurice, 8 Hall, Stuart, 5, 26, 43n22 Haller, Danny, 94 Halloween, 59, 76, 77 Hamburg, 201 Hannover, 210 Hannover Chaos Days, 208

295

Hardcore music, 40 Harlem (New York), 262 Harper’s, 87 Harvey, David, 135 Hebdige, Dick, 5, 23, 25, 43, 43n21, 43n22, 46, 62, 66, 101 Hegemony, 22, 46, 238 Hells Angels, 12, 89–95, 93n37, 99–103 Helvete, 159 Hijab, 51, 52 Hijfte, Carlos van, 222 Hip Hop, 1, 3, 14, 15, 139, 148, 235–259, 262 Hippy, 29, 30, 66, 93, 93n37, 206, 273, 282 Hipster, 81, 268, 269 Hirschman, Albert O., 115 HIV/AIDS, 130 Hobijn, Erik, 220 Holland, 181, 225 Hollister (California), 81–85, 87 Homology, 46, 46n36 Homonormativity, 129, 136 Honda Hoon, 113, 117, 122 Honda Motor Company, 111 Hongdae (Seoul), 262 Huffington Post, 143 Humanities, 34 Humpe, Annette, 206 Hunter, Meredith, 102 I Ideal, 82, 88, 98, 120, 169n46, 173, 176, 193, 206, 253, 272, 289 Immortal, 155 Informationzentrum Berlin, 278 Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change, 25

296 

INDEX

International Society for Metal Music Studies, 168 International Worker’s Day (May 1) Italy, 274 Iron Curtain, 275 Islam, 250, 252 Island Records, 180, 181, 190, 191 Israel, 240 J Jagger, Mick, 102 Jamaica, 175–177, 180, 192, 223 James St. James, 132, 133, 137, 140 James, Jesse, 98 Jihadi Rap, 250 Johnson, Robert, 130 Jonker, Leonor, 219 Jordan, 237 Jurassic Park, 282 K Kennedy, John, F., 89 Kenya, 191 Keoki, 144, 146 Kesey, Ken, 93 Kjelsson, Grutle, 166 Klashorst, Peter, 218 Kolbotn, 159 Kraftwerk, 224 Kramer, Stanley, 87, 88 Krawall, Rudi, 207, 211 Kreuzberg, 15, 262–290 Kreuzberger Mischung, 273 Kreuzberger Nächte, 276 Kristiansen, Jon, 167 Kristiansen, Sven Erik (‘Maniac’), 166 Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 276 Kurfürstendamm (Berlin), 278

L Laconia (New Hampshire), 91 Lanza, Anthony, 94 Larry Dee, 137 Latin America, 178, 246 Laughlin, Tom, 94 Lebanon, 251 Lebowski, 218, 219, 222 Legend, 11, 12, 16, 37, 52, 57–78, 98, 100, 139, 149, 162, 168, 190, 192, 213 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 23, 23n17, 40, 43, 46 Liberation Theology, 178 Libya, 236, 237 Life (maganize), 84 Life Story, 197–214 Lifestyle, 19, 28, 29, 34n57, 39, 40, 62, 72, 88, 100, 135, 204, 209–211, 246, 270 Lil’ Chino, 108, 113 Lillehammer, 152 Limelight, 12, 81, 127, 132, 134, 138, 139, 147, 148 London, 43, 60, 61, 70, 159, 197, 286 Long Island, 138 Lookout! Records, 69 Los Angeles, 82, 85, 108, 244 Los Angeles Times, 90, 93 Lynch, Thomas C., 90 M MacKaye, Ian, 39 Madison Square Garden, 180 Malcolm X, 246 Malinowski, Bronisław, 10, 37–41 Manchester, 216, 226 Manhattan, 127, 139 Mansura, 243 Maoism, 177

 INDEX 

Maori, 187 Marginalization, 3, 235–259 Marley, Bob, 14, 15, 171–194 Martin, Luther King Jr., 246 Marvin, Lee, 87, 88 Marx, Karl, 22, 44n28 Marxism, 22, 198 Marxism-Leninism, 177 Massachusetts, 101 Master narrative, 97, 199, 255 Matar, Sami, 244 Maximumrocknroll, 70 Mayhem, 63, 84–87, 94, 152, 153n3, 155, 161, 162, 165n33, 166, 167 Mayson, Barry, 100 MC Amin, 243, 251 McCarthy, Joe, 86 McNeil, Legs, 66 McNutt, Ross, 120 Mecano, 219, 228, 229n28 Media, 2, 11, 12, 16, 33, 39, 52, 57, 58, 58n3, 62, 66, 75, 80, 81, 84–88, 90–94, 90n24, 90n27, 100–107, 110, 116–118, 121, 123, 124, 129, 144–146, 151, 152, 160, 164, 165, 199, 213, 216–219, 222, 237, 240, 246–251, 257, 263, 264, 270, 275, 277, 284, 285, 289 Mekanik Kommando, 216, 228 Melendez, Andre Angel, 13, 127–149 Melendez, Johnny, 146 Melle Mel, 139 Melody Maker, 70 Memory Studies, 3, 4, 8, 9, 9n22 Mercyful Fate, 155 Middendorp, Wally Van, 217, 220 Middle East, 15, 70, 236, 240, 243, 247, 248, 250–252, 253n52, 255, 256 Minny Pops, 216–218 Minor Threat, 39

297

Mitte (Berlin), 279, 284 Mod, 26, 42, 43, 43n20, 46, 84, 85, 88 Modette, 23 Mongols MC, 103 Moody, Titus, 94 Moral Panic, 73, 84–87, 89, 91, 93, 94, 101, 103, 213, 264, 275, 281, 287 Morley, Paul, 216, 221 Morocco, 237, 256 Moroder, Giorgio, 224 Motorcycle Gang, 12, 79–104 MTV, 249 Mubarak, Husni, 237, 241, 243 Muggleton, David, 6, 25, 48 Muhammad Ali, 246 Munich, 211, 224 Murray, K. Gordon, 94 Musicking, 228 Muslim, 51, 191, 250, 252 Myth, 1–16, 32, 33, 35–53, 58, 79–104, 123, 131, 200–203, 215–218, 222–224, 236, 238–245, 262–290 Myth Studies, 3, 4, 9n22, 265, 265n9 Mythos Kreuzberg, 262, 263, 283 N Nagel, Karl, 208, 210 Nagell, Gylve ‘Fenriz,’ 159 The Narcicyst, 244 NASA, 137 Nasmak, 225 Nation of Islam, 246 Nation, The, 91 National Geographic, 275 Neoliberalism, 131, 141, 145, 146 Neo-Nazis, 213 Neo-Tribes, 7, 19 Netherlands, The, 216–218, 221 Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), 273, 277

298 

INDEX

New Left, 176 New Musical Express (NME), 221, 223, 225 New Statesman, 67 Newsweek, 90, 92 New York City (NYC), 13, 16, 108, 127–131, 133, 136, 137, 148, 149 New York Times, 90, 92, 146, 175, 180 New Zealand, 186, 187 Nicaragua, 188 Night Wolves, 103 Nijmegen, 216, 222, 228 Ninja, Danny Tiberius, 130 Nixon, Richard, 102 No Boundaries Coalition, 110 No Fixed Address, 186 North Africa, 236, 243, 247, 250, 256 North America, 156, 172, 187, 191, 192, 251 Northern Ireland, 51 Norway, 151, 152, 154, 156–162, 165, 166 O Oakland, 89, 94 Offendum, Omar, 244 Ohlin, Per ‘Dead,’ 167 Omaha, 101 Oor, 221, 225 Opernhauskrawalle, 184 Oral History, 14, 78, 154, 198, 199, 199n5, 202, 213, 214, 227, 281, 281n61 Oranienstraße (Berlin), 278 Organic intellectual, 239, 239n6, 241, 243, 246 Oslo, 159 Ostension, 57–78 Outlaws MC, 103

P Pacific, the, 172, 188, 192 Pagans MC, 103 Palestine, 240 Palladium, 127 Pan-Africanism, 178, 180 Paper, Walt, 134, 136–138, 140–142, 144, 149 Paradiso, 225 Parent’s Music Resource Center, 152 Parents of Punkers, 66 Park Circle (Baltimore), 107 Participatory observation, 253 Peel, John, 216 Performance, 41, 68, 69, 82, 148, 153–155, 180, 182n37, 184, 185, 221, 228, 239, 245 Pettiniccio, Darlyne, 71 Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington (POBOBs), 82, 83, 89 Plurex Records, 225 Plus Instruments, 216 Polak, Dirk, 218, 219, 222, 228–230 Polhemus, Ted, 7, 148 Polletta, Francesa, 184 Poppers, 213, 277, 278n49 Popsenteret, 158 Pop 2000, 213 Popular culture, 30, 42, 62, 65, 81, 94, 98, 104, 220, 237, 238, 245, 252–254, 256, 258, 259 Popular memory, 1 Popular music, 14, 157, 175, 217, 218, 227, 228, 231, 259 Portugal, 205 Positive Force, 70 Postmodern, 28, 47, 49, 170 Post-punk, 14, 215–232 Post-subcultural studies, 6 Post-subcultural theory, 20, 30, 34, 37, 52 Preference construction, 262–290

 INDEX 

Prenzlauer Berg (Berlin), 279, 280, 284 Proletariat, The (Band), 61 Provo, 216 Psychology, 45 Pugh, Catherine E., 113 Punk, 1, 3, 5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 23, 24n23, 29, 30, 39, 40, 42, 43, 57–78, 149, 155, 182–184, 189, 197–214, 216, 218–220, 230, 273, 274, 277, 279 Punkhouse, 273 Q Queens (New York), 129 Quivoron, Lola, 108 R Racism, 114, 128, 129, 131, 139, 141–143, 163, 183, 241 Rag, Harry, 210 Ramone, Dee Dee, 64 Ramones, the, 74 Rapping, 244, 245, 259 Rastafari, 175–179, 181, 184, 187, 191–193 Rave, 33, 127–149 Rawlings-Blake, Stephanie, 111, 121 Rayya El Zein, 250 Realism, 38–40 Rebels MC, 103 Reeves, Don ‘Boots,’ 89 Reflexive Turn, 35, 51 Reflexivity, 29, 31, 48, 49, 51, 166, 169 Reisterstown Road (Baltimore), 107 Religion, 45, 51, 168, 178, 179 Resistance, 5, 6, 22, 28, 46, 48, 98, 102, 175, 177, 180–185, 188, 192, 237–239, 242, 244, 280, 289 Retreat Street Stables (Baltimore), 115

299

Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 189 Reynolds, Simon, 223, 224 Rha Goddess, 235 Ricoeur, Paul, 151 Rietveld Academy, 230 Riggs, Robert, 128, 142, 143 Ritual, 5, 6, 9, 33, 43 Riverside (Los Angeles), 85, 86 RN30, 35 Robin Hood, 98 Rock Against Racism, 70, 183 Rockheim, 158 Rolling Stones, 102 Romel B, 240 Rooney, Frank, 87 Rough Guide, 264n8, 279, 280 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 98 RTM, 250 Rush, Richard, 94 Russia, 103 S Sacralization, 2n5, 265–267 St. Theresa, 38 San Bernardino (California), 82 San Francisco, 75, 83, 89, 92, 93 San Francisco Chronicle, 83 Santiago, Desi, 136 Satan’s Slaves, 90 Satyricon, 158, 159, 159n17 Savage, Jon, 60, 199 Scandinavia, 158, 159n19, 160, 164 Scenes, 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 24n23, 29, 39, 47, 48, 50, 64, 69, 75, 82, 93, 106–108, 112, 117–124, 127, 128n1, 129–134, 129n3, 136–140, 142–149, 152–154, 156–158, 160–170, 182, 184, 198, 203, 207–209, 211, 213, 215, 217–223, 231, 232, 241, 269, 271, 273–277, 283, 284, 289

300 

INDEX

Schellinx, Harold, 218–224, 218n4, 226, 229 Scholte, Rob, 217n2, 218, 230 Schöneberg (Berlin), 272 Sconyroc, 113, 117 Scratz, 225, 226 Screamin’ Rachel, 139, 140 Second World War, 5, 42, 82, 101 Secularism, 250 Semiotics, 5, 6, 23, 41, 43, 43n22, 46, 52, 80, 97 Seoul, 262 Sex Pistols, The, 60, 70, 71, 73, 203, 219 Sheffield, 217 Sierra Leone, 188, 189, 189n65, 192 Sir Hannes, 203 Al-Sisi, Abdul Fatah, 237 Skinheads, 5, 62, 213, 287n82 Social sciences, 34, 37, 38, 51 Södermalm (Stockholm), 268, 269 Solomon, Joe, 95 Sontag, Susan, 8 SO36, 273, 280n59 Sounds, 277 South, 188 South Africa, 188 Southeast Asia, 51, 188 Soviet Sex, 218 Spandau (Berlin), 274 Spellemannprisen, 158 Spin Magazine, 138 Spontis, 271 Spungen, Nancy, 64, 65 Squatter movement, 218, 272, 273, 275 Staten Island, 137, 139 Stichting Pop Nederland, 217 Stockholm, 249, 268 STORMrave, 137, 138 Strabler, Johnny, 79 Straightedge, 39, 40

Stranglers, The, 204 Structuralism, 5, 41–42, 47, 52 Stubberud, Jørn ‘Necrobutcher,’ 162, 167 Student movement, 205, 271, 275 Sturges, John, 99 Style, 5–7, 13, 21–23, 29, 33, 34, 43, 43n21, 44, 46–52, 62, 67–69, 73–75, 85, 88, 89n23, 91, 101, 133, 148, 151, 152, 154–156, 160, 164, 168, 170, 181, 182, 187, 188, 188n64, 191, 203, 206, 216, 247 Subcultural actor, 2–4, 6, 7, 13, 16, 216, 270, 284 Subcultural studies, 4–8, 20, 33 Subcultural theory, 3, 7, 23, 26, 29–31 Sub-Saharan Africa, 172 Südost Express, 276, 277 Sulaiman, Amir, 244 Summer, Donna, 224 Sunday Times, 179 Supermarket of Styles, 7, 47, 148–149 Sutter, Kurt, 104 Swedish, 165n33, 269 Switzerland, 101, 185, 189, 192 Symbolic capital, 201 Synthpop, 224 SYPH, 210 Syria, 236, 237, 244 T Tahrir Square, 237 Techno, 130, 137–140, 280n59 Teddy Boys, 5, 46 Telegraph, The, 262 Thatcher, Margaret, 60 Third World movement, 16 Thompson, Hunter, 91, 92 Thrash Metal, 155

 INDEX 

Tiananmen Square, 175 TIME Magazine, 249 Toronto Star, 74 Torso, 133, 228 Tosh, Peter, 175, 177, 180 Tourism, 152, 159, 264, 270, 275, 278, 283–285, 289 Tox Modell, 225 TripAdvisor, 282, 286, 288 Tunisia, 236, 237, 241, 249, 256 Tunnel, 127, 137, 139, 147 Turkish, 263, 263n3, 276, 277 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 96 Tuwat congress, 273 12 o’Clock Boys, 113 U Ulrich, Peter, 275 Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, 158, 159n17 Ultra, 219–221, 225, 230 United Kingdom, 176, 179, 221 United States Department of Justice (DoJ), 106, 110, 111, 120n74 United States of America (USA), 127, 135, 156, 235, 236, 238, 242, 243, 246–248 Utøya, 164 Utrecht Centraal Museum, 219 U2, 182 V VARA, 222 Venlo, 222 Venom, 155 Vice, 228 Vicious, Sid, 60, 65, 172 Vičs, Ivar, 220 Vietnam War, 89, 173 Vikernes, Varg, 152, 161, 163–166, 168

301

Village Voice, 135, 136 Vinyl, 220, 229, 231 Vogue, 262 Volendam, 230 Volkskrant, De, 222 VPRO, 222 W Wailer, Bunny, 180 Wailers, the, 180, 181 Walhof, Gerard, 218 Walker, Alice, 184 Warren, M. Holden, 108, 112, 114, 115, 118, 119, 122 Washington Post, 188 Weld El 15, 243 West Baltimore Commission on Police Misconduct, 110 Western Europe, 172, 181, 187, 192 West Flanders, 166 West Germany, 197–214, 275 Whitewashing, 13, 129–131, 133, 137, 141, 142, 145, 146 Wild Out Wheelie Boyz, 105–124 Wild West, 100, 115 Williamsburg (Brooklyn, New York), 268, 269 Willis, Paul, 34, 80 Willoughby, Bart, 186 Wilmersdorf (Berlin), 271 Wister, Owen, 98 WJZ Lor Dev, 111, 113, 117 Y Yothu Yindi, 186 Young Lions, The, 217n2, 218, 230 Youth cultural studies, 34

302 

INDEX

Youth culture, 4–7, 10, 11, 15, 19–34, 47, 48, 51, 188, 189, 197, 198, 200–203, 205, 210, 213, 214, 236, 239, 262–290 YouTube, 105, 108, 244 Yunupingu, Mandawuy, 186

Z Zedong, Mao, 172 Zimbabwe, 188 Zimbabwe War of Liberation, 188 Zurich, 184, 185